2018 was a big year for Emmy award-winning actress Anne Winters. Looking back, Winters not only won an Emmy for her starring role in the scripted television series Zac & Mia (AwesomenessTV/go90), but also co-starred opposite Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish in the Universal Pictures comedy film Night School and landed a role in Netflix’s critically acclaimed television show, 13 Reasons Why. Winters will reprise her role in 13 Reasons Why for the show’s third season, set to air later in 2019. In addition, 2019 will also showcase Winters in a starring role in a new ABC series, Grand Hotel. With Executive Producer Eva Longoria on board for Grand Hotel, 2019 doesn’t look too bad for the 24-year-old actress.
Although making the decision to pursue acting is sometimes a risk for young up-and-comers, it just made sense for this emerging star. “I spent half the year out in Los Angeles–away from high school in Dallas–which was hard. I still applied to colleges and I lied to my friends saying I was going to SMU in Texas. I even had a fake SMU graduation party, even though I kind of knew I was going to Los Angeles,” says Winters. But upon graduating, she headed to the City of Angels, where six years later, she says feels like home.
Winters now counts her travels as going from set to set, sometimes in the same day. “I was filming 13 Reasons Why and Night School at the same time,” she says. From the serious dramatics of 13 Reasons Why, where her character was facing an emotional storyline as well as a courtroom, to the hilarious antics involved in filming with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Hadish, Winters was forced to learn how to juggle her varying roles quickly. The young actress says she stays focused and compartmentalizes well with the proper preparation and research, plus some good old-fashioned simplicity. “I try not to think about it too much; you just have to take it one scene at a time,” says Winters.
In addition to taking her career one scene at a time, Winters takes one success at a time as well, despite her abundance of ‘wow’ moments in the past year. “Being at the Night School premiere with Kevin [Hart] and Tiffany [Haddish], a big massive blockbuster premiere, was so surreal. Winning an Emmy was so surreal too. It didn’t even hit me until a few weeks later,” Winters gushes. “How crazy is that? It’s insane. It’s always hitting me.” With many more projects in the works, across all genres and networks, it’s safe to say that Winters is a key young actress to watch in 2019.
