Brianne Howey has always looked forward to playing mom roles. Here's how 'Ginny & Georgia' actually hits closer to home for the actress.
'Ginny & Georgia' is the world's new obsession, and we just can't get enough of Brianne Howey, who plays a carefree 30-year-old single mother of Ginny and Austin.
The series premiered on Netflix on February 24, 2021, and continues to dominate the Top 10 charts in different countries.
So while the rest of the world continues to binge-watch the dramedy, let's get to know who Brianne Howey is behind the camera.
Here are 10 interesting facts you probably didn't know about the actress.
There are so many things in the Netflix series 'Ginny & Georgia' that resonate with Brianne in real life. For one, she grew up with a very young single mother, so she can relate to the relationship dynamics of the young mom and her kids in the series.
“I grew up with a super-young, single mom. This couldn’t have hit any more close to home,” she explains to Dujour. “The lack of boundaries and a little bit of codependency and oversharing and keeping secrets and then being offended that they kept the secret and the lines getting blurred of the mom wanting to protect where the daughter feels entitled to know everything because there are only so many years apart, so that part actually really resonated with me.”
Brianne went to an all-girls school, where she describes herself as a "good-girl." She said her schoolmates were not as mean as the characters in TV shows and movies.
"My school had a lot of cliques, but everyone was wearing the same thing, no one had any makeup on, and no one did their hair. But what was cool is that there was no drama," she revealed in an interview with Maxim. "You'd hear stories about other all-girls schools in the area, where girls were hooking up in the bathroom, but I didn't see it. All the drama was on the weekends."
Brianne concentrated on getting good grades in high school, but she also discovered her passion for improv during those times. " . . . I think it was there that I kind of found my voice because I was involved in improv and the plays, and I would also do the plays at the all-boy school," she said during a December 2016 interview with Imagista. "It was just sort of what all the 'cool' girls were doing."
After high-school, Brianne went to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts to study drama. She told Cliché Mag in April 2015 that she "started looking at [acting] in a different lens" during her time at the school.
She landed a couple of short film gigs, including Suckerpunch, Appropriate Sex, and Party Favors. Before she graduated in early 2011, she booked her first-ever TV role for CW.
She told The Chic Spy in September 2016: "My first audition was for the CW's 90210... I remember being very nervous and showing up way too early. I went in for the role of 'Girl in Green' and ended up booking a different role with a name, Stacey."
Although it was only a minor appearance, the casting kick-started Brianne's acting career.
Brianne may have grown up near Hollywood, but she never aspired to become an actress when she was young. She wanted to be a flight attendant instead, a dream that resulted from constantly traveling with her family.
"I didn't really think of acting as a serious career until I was in college," she explained to Complex in November 2014. "When I was little, I wanted to be a flight attendant or something. I love to travel. My family traveled a lot, so I was just always on airplanes, and that just looked like fun, and the ladies were really cool. They were so cute and so helpful, and they got to travel everywhere."
A particular movie even inspired her to become a cabin crew even more.
"When I saw View from the Top, Christina Applegate and Gwyneth Paltrow made being a flight attendant seem like the coolest job ever," the actress told Maxim in October 2014.
Unlike her eccentric mother character in 'Ginny & Georgia,' Brianne is more of a responsible role model in real life. She came from a big family and loves to look after her younger siblings.
"Both my parents remarried and had more, so three of them are much younger," she told Complex. "It was cool to play a kind of different role in their life, being a little bit older than them. I'd be running them to their practices and helping them with their homework and just kind of watching them grow up."
Despite the pressure of being the eldest, Brianne admits she enjoys being a role model.
"It's nice; when you have someone looking up to you, they think everything you do is so cool," she added.
Brianne and her future husband, Matt Ziering, first met in a bar in Los Angeles. She was on a night out with friends while Matt was celebrating after taking a bar exam. The two kept running into each other on the bar, again and again, in the following nights.
Five years later, they are now engaged to be married but had to cancel their wedding plans due to the pandemic.
"We canceled our wedding," Brianne explained to Los Angeles Magazine in January 2021. "We couldn't get married in 2020, but we did get a dog."
Aside from majoring in drama, Brianne also minored in Child Psychology at New York University. The decision was made "almost by accident.
."I found myself taking all of those college classes, and before I knew it, my college counselor was like, 'You know you basically have a minor.' All the classes I chose to take fulfilled the requirements for the child psychology program. I love kids. I am from a huge family, and I think I have always been curious to know why we are the way we are, which I believe all stems from our childhood," she told Imagista.
Brianne could easily book any model or sexy roles with her beauty and alluring physique, but the actress says she has always looked forward to playing a mom role.
“I’ve always looked forward to the day I get to play a mom. My mom has passed, but it made this role all the more special because it took me places, and I got to sort of live on the other side of the table. I definitely have more of an appreciation for teenagers and parenting after this,” Howey told Dujour.
Brianne has been a staunch supporter of different movements that support justice and equality. She has extended her support for the fight against racism and has also advocated for LGBTQ and women's rights.
Her bio also has a link to DonorsChoose, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping teachers get funding for their school-related projects.
Brianne is born on May 24, 1989, in La Canada Flintridge, CA. She is the oldest of five siblings.
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