She plays the eccentric, free-spirited hippie on UPN’s hit sitcom “Girlfriends.” She is involved with PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals]. She writes, produces and sings for the highly acclaimed rock band XEO3 — Persia White is Hollywood’s next starlet.
“Girlfriends” focuses on the adventures of four attractive African-American women who struggle to balance their personal and professional lives in Los Angeles. Now in its fifth season, Persia plays Lynn Searcy. On the series. Lynn is an intelligent, crazy and creative hippie with the gift of gab and an erratic personality. In the first couple of seasons, Lynn was consistently unemployed, carting her meager belongings from one girlfriend’s home to another whilst devising where her next free meal would come from, not exactly the kind of girlfriend you would want around. Persia says in real life she is no moocher, and although there are some similarities to her television character, there are also huge differences. “They have taken some of my personal life — stuff like [me being a] vegan and the tattoos, but in all reality I am not really like my character. There are things that are similar because it’s fun to take elements of the real person and put them in a character. I am extremely responsible. I am a single mother working my ass off and I don’t know how to mooch.”
Born to a Bahamian father and an Irish mother, Persia grew up in the Bahamas. An island which she has fond memories of, Persia visits the Bahamas every couple of years and credits it as her grounding force. “It‘s amazing how there is this inter-connectedness in
the Caribbean. It’s just so beautiful – the air, the water, the quality and mainly the way life is lived. I went to Jamaica recently and even though it wasn’t my island, it was just like being home … I would like to visit all the other Caribbean countries and go island hopping.”
Persia spent most of her early childhood in Nassau, Bahamas, receiving her first scholarship at age three to the Nassau Civic Ballet Company. Becoming hooked on performing, she moved to Florida a few years later and joined Miami’s Coconut Grove Children’s Theater studying various forms of dance, singing and painting, and was voted Most Talented Senior in high school. The “Hollywood calling” sent the multi-faceted Persia to Los Angeles and she has since built an impressive resume of movie credits appearing in feature films “Red Letters,” “My Perfect Date,” and guest starring roles in “NYPD Blue,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Malcolm & Eddie.” Still, the shapely actress has fought hard not be typecast as a sexual object. As a result, says she has turned down many movie roles, roles she feels were unsuitable for her, some of which involved nudity. “There are a lot of things I have turned down. It’s probably for better or for worse – I can’t say this is an easy road I have taken. I think nudity can be beautiful and I am not against nudity by any means, but a lot of the nudity is unnecessary and demeaning to women and when I see roles like that I won’t do it. It’s really the content of the character and what it’s about.”
A staunch vegan who gave up meat five years ago, Persia makes vegetarian versions of Caribbean dishes like Soya patties. She calls it an attempt to capture the Caribbean food flavor she yearns. “I have been a vegan for about five years and a vegetarian for about 20 years. I did it slowly and gave up one thing at a time,” she admits. “With Caribbean [food], it’s the flair in how you cook things, so I will make vegan versions of Caribbean dishes and just substitute the fish, but keep the spices and the lemons and peppers and just make up my own concoction. All the girls make fun of me at work because I carry hot sauce with me in my purse, and I pour hot sauce and lemon on anything.”
Actively involved with PETA, Persia recently completed a feature length documentary with actor Joaquin Phoenix (“Hotel Rwanda,” “Ladder 49”) called “Earthlings,” about humanity’s dependence on animals for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research. It’s a project which she found extremely rewarding. “It is really wonderful and I’m just really excited about it because it deals with how man has come to treat animals — being disrespectful to the planet and humans. It’s beautiful and it’s not a normal documentary. It’s poetic, it’s visual and there’s music and it is thought provoking and I am very proud of it.” Persia was a teenager when she first picked up a copy of PETA magazine and claims it was what made her change her carnivorous diet. “For me, it [PETA] is close to my heart because they gave information that helped change me to be a better person or try to be a better person and I think that is priceless. I have always been a fan of them because they put information – sometimes hard to look at information in the face of the public eye.”
Despite a friendly disposition, Persia admits she is a very private person rarely seen in the Hollywood social circuit. “I am a bit of a private person, but I do work events if it’s necessary to be there, otherwise, you are probably not going to see me there.” Still, that doesn’t seem to phase the tabloids nor the paparazzi who stalk Persia on the odd occasion. “When I see them [paparazzi] trying to pull a fast one I usually call them out. I am pretty open, so I would be like what is that guy doing in that shrubbery behind me? What’s funny to me are the rumors that start. I heard rumors that I was gay recently and I was like….What? Where did that come from?” Shunning the Hollywood glitz and glamour, Persia prefers instead to spend quality time with her teenage daughter Mecca, her dog, two cats, her music, which she describes as “a little bit of rock and electronica” and her poetry. “I write a lot, and when I am not on the show I am an engineer for music and have a recording studio in my house and do some soundtrack work in there. I am also [a] bit of a technical nerd so I get into that world, which can be time consuming. That and being a parent keeps me busy,” says Persia. An avid musician and a former percussionist, Persia is part of a group called XEO3, a sort of eclectic, industrial rock band and cites Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Tricky as her favorite artists. “Music is my strongest passion because I am actually creating it and it’s
from my soul and is who I am. The words and emotions are what I am feeling about the world and those perspectives become expressed through that music. My ultimate goal is to do music and film, create and produce soundtrack music within films because I feel the most powerful medium you could ever have is the combination of the two. Music, visual and a message, and film is definitely the most powerful medium.” Persia has collaborated with Dominique Miller, the guitarist for Sting, members of Pink Floyd, Tricky and The Go-Go’s and hopes to one day open a school of arts in Los Angeles. “One of my goals is to try and help give back to the youth. Being a parent, I realize there is a real need for a better way of educating children. The school system in America is not effective. My sister and mother are teachers so it’s very close to my heart to see the arts are being taken away and funding is constantly being cut. To have people not educated is one of the most cruel things you can do. It’s very unfortunate and I would like [to] open a school of arts and hopefully have enough celebrity friends who can have come guest teach.”
Persia can next be seen in the upcoming independent feature “The Fall of Night,.” Described as a drama in the vein of the classic “Twilight Zone” television series, it tells the story of a struggling rock musician (played by Bruce Michael Hall of “One Life to Live” fame) stranded in the California desert with a group of eccentric misfits. Persia has described her role in the film as “a rare and complex character woven in a very interesting story.” “The Fall of Night” is scheduled for release next year.
