Jessica Szohr
Jessica Szohr is an actor, born 1985.
Szohr came up the ordinary way, one guest spot at a time: My Wife and Kids in 2003, Joan of Arcadia in 2004, then What About Brian and CSI: Miami in 2007. The break arrived the same year, when Gossip Girl cast her as Vanessa Abrams, and she stayed with the series from 2007 to 2012.
Vanessa was a hard part to play well. She was the character positioned outside the money, which on that show meant she mostly existed to be judged, by the leads and by the audience, and Szohr had to build someone likeable out of a role the writing kept putting in the wrong. She managed it often enough that the character became a real argument among viewers, which is more than most supporting roles on teen dramas ever provoke.
The films that followed leaned on timing rather than depth: Piranha 3D (2010), I Don't Know How She Does It (2011), Tower Heist (2011), The Internship (2013), Two Night Stand (2014), Ted 2 (2015). None of them asked much of her. Television has been better, with Kingdom and then The Orville, where she plays the security chief Talla Keyali and finally gets to be the physically capable one instead of the one being reacted to. It is a career that has quietly improved while nobody was paying attention.
Movies (11)
TV (4)
Where to start with Jessica Szohr
There is no avoiding Gossip Girl, but watch it for the show rather than for her: Vanessa gets the thinnest material of any regular and Szohr is better than the writing around her.
The one to actually watch her in is The Orville, where the part is built on competence instead of judgement and she has to carry action and deadpan comedy inside the same episode. After that, Piranha 3D is exactly as stupid and enjoyable as intended, Two Night Stand is the small romantic comedy that gives her the most room, and Kingdom is the serious one, a gym drama with a much harder edge than anything else here. Ted 2 and Tower Heist are studio paydays, and it shows.