‘The Paper’ Star Ramona Young on Building a Character from Scratch

The Paper has quickly proven to be the perfect follow-up to The Office. The new show picks up a few years after the events of The Office and introduces us to several new characters. We had the opportunity to speak with Ramona Young who portrays the no-nonsense and emotionally guarded Nicole Lee.

Whether or not you’ve watched The Office, Episode 1 of The Paper does a great job explaining how Dunder Mifflin has faded into non-existence, allowing the same documentary crew from 20 years ago the freedom to now pursue coverage of the “Toledo Truth Teller,” a struggling Midwestern newspaper company that’s trying to keep up with social media and online journalism. One of its staffers is Nicole Lee (Ramona Young), who frequently finds herself attempting to avoid the spotlight while navigating a fellow staffer’s love-bombing advances.

Since this series is a spin-off, we’re immediately introduced to numerous new characters. Luckily for actress Ramona Young, she was able to build the foundation of Nicole’s character from scratch. “Yeah, so during the audition process, it was incredibly cryptic,” she explained to The Nerds of Color during our interview. “There was no real character name, no character description, no real sides or anything like that. So you really didn’t have an opportunity to play a character. You have to really just be yourself in that situation. And I kind of took that as an opportunity to really bring that, because I’ve played a lot of really fun characters, but I’ve never been just like, okay, this is me and this is who I am. And so this is one of the first times that I get to do that.”

When asked about how she was able to create some of Nicole’s backstory, Ramona shared with us a little about her own personal upbringing:  “I grew up in a military family. My mom was in the military, and she was a single mom of three, and we just moved around, like, constantly. Like, I’ve been to almost like, 40 different schools growing up, like, one year we moved, like, six times. And so it’s kind of easy for me to kind of fade in the background or to acclimate and kind of just, like, survive by being really chill and going with the flow. And I think that’s also kind of how Nicole navigates. She kind of like, she kind of like makes her action in silence.”

Ramona goes on to elaborate about her thoughts on Nicole’s relationship issues, emotional guardedness, and more during our conversation. You can watch the full interview and hear more below:

You can now watch all of Season 1 of The Paper HERE