Whitney Peak On Finding Her Way
Ugandan-born, Canadian-raised Whitney Peak often felt like an outsider growing up. Today, she stars in Chanel campaigns, TV shows and upcoming films, and has found a new home for her multitudes in New York.
Photography by Cass Bird
Fashion by Xenia May Settel
It’s easy to draw similarities between the actor Whitney Peak and Zoya Lott, the character she played in the Gossip Girl reboot that thrust her onto the global stage in 2021. Both have felt like outsiders trying to find their way in unfamiliar worlds, navigating the old and the new, and both have, despite the odds, thrived by being adaptable.
Peak was born and raised in Uganda before moving to Canada with her mother and siblings, aged nine. She got her first acting gig when she was 11, with a small part on Aaron Sorkin’s 2017 film Molly’s Game, before landing a recurring role in the Netflix show Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Alongside her work on screen, she is the face of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle fragrance. While filming Gossip Girl, she relocated to New York, where she now lives on the Lower East Side and has, once again, found her feet in a new environment.
What was it like moving from Kampala to Vancouver at such a young age?
WP I remember it being like living in a Disney show. I was a kid in a toy store, being in Western civilization. Then, obviously, once you start to become more aware of different things and look at the bigger picture, it’s not so black and white.
In Uganda, I was always perceived as Caucasian because I was lighter-skinned, so I wasn’t really part of my community or my culture. My entire family on my mom’s side all live in Uganda and are fully African, so I grew up always feeling like the odd one out.
When I came to Vancouver, it was completely different because then I was mixed, and I was from Africa, and it was just a different dynamic between me and the people I interacted with. For the first couple of years, you don’t really pay attention to that, then you grow and start to realize what these concepts are, and you educate yourself a bit more, and then you look back and think, “Oh, that’s what that was.” It’s always a bit disappointing to have those moments of realization because I think about how much happier I would have been if I just lived in complete oblivion of what was going on.
What do you remember about your childhood in Uganda?
WP Discipline is implemented in a very different way there. I went to boarding school from the age of six until I moved to Vancouver, so it was all quite strict. You had uniforms, even for Saturday and Sunday. You had to get up at the crack of dawn, and our parents would come visit on the weekends. And it’s a very tough love: people will tell you what they think, especially families. There’s quite an expectation set for the women in the family, and my older siblings practically had to raise me because my mother, as a solo parent, had to be out doing whatever she needed to be doing. So, my oldest sister took care of us.
Another thing I got from living in Uganda is that there’s such a strong sense of community; everyone who lived in that village was considered my family. And then, moving to Vancouver, I realized it was different – you don’t say “Hi” to everybody whom you walk past. There’s not that human openness as much in Western culture.
How often do you go back to Uganda?
WP The last time I went back was four years ago, in 2019, and it was interesting because I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I had a few experiences that were funny; on the street, I can speak the language, but I don’t look like I can speak or understand what people are saying. So, I had quite a lot of fun with that because it’s so part of the culture to just say everything you’re thinking out loud – people are like open books.
What feels like home now?
WP I’ve never really had somewhere that feels like home. It’s an amalgamation of all these different places and people in my life. My family and I always lived in close quarters – that’s the dynamic I grew up with – so, when I moved to New York four years ago, it was my first taste of independence, of having the freedom to develop as I wish and have my different phases. Because growing up, I felt that I had to be one person for my family and one person when I was out at school, kind of playing both worlds. Also, my family is Muslim, so I was figuring out my relationship to that. Moving to New York was the first time I felt like I wasn’t letting anybody down. I could learn about myself and figure out who I was, what I like to do, how I want to dress. And meeting new people opened up different conversations for me. I was very exposed to a different world of art and culture and different philosophies, and I feel grateful for that because it helped shape my idea of the world. So, in a way, New York feels like home for me now.
How did you feel about playing Zoya in the reboot of Gossip Girl, given the original series’s standing in popular culture?
WP I was nervous because I know how it can go with reboots or remakes. It was Gossip Girl in the modern day, and it wasn’t following the same storylines, and there were lots of new influences, like the types of technology and social media. And it’s such a rare thing for a show to do as well as the original Gossip Girl did. Everything lined up: the cast, the characters, how they shot it with this kind of messy, quick pace. It made you feel like you were there.
So, I was excited and nervous about how the public would perceive it, and whether it would run for a long time. I didn’t really have any grand expectations for the show – I thought it would probably be a one-off job. So, I was happy that we got two seasons out of it. I don’t really have any bad memories or experiences with the show. I had a great time. There were obviously things that could have been better executed on the show, in the big picture, making everybody feel like they belonged. I’m not going to speak for anybody, but I think there were little things here and there that happened while shooting the show that… yeah. Anyway, I had a good time on the show, and when problems were expressed, they tried their best to figure it out.
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Whitney Peak wears clothing and accessories by CHANEL throughout. Hair by Akki Shirakawa using Hair Rituel by SISLEY. Makeup by Tyron Machhausen.