CONNECT . MOTIVATE . INSPIRE .
As a student at the Fashion Institute in New York City in the 1980s Cassandra was doing well. She was modeling in the city and studying patternmaking. But soon she got the bug to broaden her horizons and she didn’t hesitate to get out of dodge. She dropped her studies and hightailed it to Germany without knowing how to speak a lick of German. At 18, Cassandra fell in love and gave birth to her only daughter Novi. She lived the glamourous life modeling on runways in Italy and Germany. Novi was able to travel to Spain and Denmark and hear and learn different languages at a young age. It was early on that Cassandra realized her daughter had a similar artistic temperament as herself. They would often spend all day enjoying movies at the movie theater together. “It was an event,” Novi laughs. Novi was so into movies and television that often her rewards for good behavior was being able to watch VHS tapes of Disney movies, TGIF shows or watching Saturday morning cartoons. Her mother encouraged her interest in film and movies and pretty much everything Novi found interesting from being a veterinarian to a lawyer to an actress. “I was a kid who tried out different things. I liked so many things I couldn’t decide on one thing. My mom put me in acting class, piano, karate…she just let
me kind of play around and see what I wanted to do,” Novi remembers. It eventually dawned on Novi that if she was an actress, she could be anybody on any given day.
and she had a monologue to do. She was amazing.”
wasn’t working out. The Berlin wall fell. It was becoming increasingly difficult for them to stay in Germany. When her mother and father split, Cassandra and Novi headed back to New York. Novi – fluent in German - spent summers with her father in Germany.
But when Novi grew tired of classes, her mother didn’t force her to continue.
“One day she didn’t want to
Novi eventually gravitated back to acting on her own.
When she turned 17, she decided she wanted to go to college at CCNY in Harlem to study theater. There she got a start in theater performing in the play “The Vagina Monologues.” She studied Shakespeare. “I was like Shakespeare is cold! In high school I didn’t know how to grasp the concept of Shakespeare. But I realized I’m a visual artist and a performer and that I learn through actually doing the tasks,” she said. From there she started to take on diverse roles along with learning playwriting, performing, stage plays and directing. She acted off-Broadway; she says even though she couldn’t sing. “I can’t sing baby, but I can hum. I can do a two-step, I can shake a tambourine,” she laughs. “Theater is a big place. You have to project; you have to be ready to go and you can’t mess up. I got good at it,” she says. Working in theater helped in her current role in a Tyler Perry production where the actors have two weeks to film the entire season.
She started out as a child actor doing commercials for Black hair – for Just-For-Kids and Dark-n-Lovely products. Her mother put her in acting classes at the Lee Strasberg theatre and film institute when she was nine years old. “She really blossomed,” her mom remembers. “Her teacher told us she was good. At the end of the session, they put on a show for the parents,
go anymore, and I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and she said, ‘yes,’ and that was that.” “I was glad she didn’t force me. I’m very grateful now. Sometimes it’s just not the right time,” Novi recalls. It would end up being perfect timing and the right move.
The relationship between Novi’s mom and her father
3 7 | HBCU TIMES SPRING ISSUE 2024
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease