“ I REALIZED THAT THE ONLY THING YOU CAN CONTROL IN THIS INDUSTRY IS WHAT YOU CREATE YOURSELF.”

— CHELSEA FREI

WEARING THE FRANKIE SHOP & BVLGARI

PHOTOS PHIL CHESTER & SARA BYRNE STYLING ORETTA CORBELLI.
DOCUMENTED IN LOS ANGELES, CA. Shirt TOD’S, sunglasses L’ECURIE PARIS.

Dress BLUMARINE, blazer THE FRANKIE SHOP, earrings and necklace BVLGARI.

Chelsea Frei learned early that waiting for permission was never going to be enough. Long before television, auditions, or the uncertainty that comes with building a career in Hollywood, there was a third-grade production of Sword Called Excalibur. Frei played Morgan Le Fey. It was a childhood performance, but the conviction that followed was anything but temporary. “I did a play called the Sword Called Excalibur when I was in third grade and played Morgan Le Fey,” she remembers. “From those performances on, I knew that’s all I ever wanted to do.”

That certainty eventually took her from Massachusetts to NYU, where she studied classical acting, and to London to study Shakespeare. On paper, it might seem an unlikely route toward a career increasingly defined by comedy, but Frei sees no contradiction. “I actually think Shakespeare is the perfect place to learn comedy,” she says. “The characters can be so big, and so sure of their point of view, that it makes the comedy incredibly clear.” She was drawn to the freedom of disappearing into characters she would rarely be asked to play professionally: clowns, 80-year-old men, people far removed from herself. Comedy was already there, embedded in the seriousness of the training.

While at NYU, Frei found herself inside another kind of education. Internships at Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Seth Meyers put her inside 30 Rock, close enough to see the machinery of live television operating in real time. “My time interning at SNL and Late Night while I was at NYU was maybe the coolest time of my life,” Frei says, remembering “wearing ill-fitting blazers from Zara and parading around 30 Rock” as though she had hit the jackpot. What stayed with her was the
energy: shows preparing to go live, people moving quickly, and the uncertainty of what might happen next. She describes live television as “thrilling, daunting, terrifying.” “I became addicted to that energy,” she says. There were also the Milk Bar cookies left behind by guests in their green rooms. Frei jokes that after gaining fifteen pounds eating them, “that time needed to come to an end.”
There is something revealing in the memory. Frei’s career has been driven by ambition, but she does not describe those early years solely in terms of where they might lead. She remembers the ill-fitting clothes, the food, the absurdity and the feeling of simply being there. The destination mattered, but so did everything happening on the way to it. Eventually, that distinction would become much more important.

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“ I THOUGHT THERE WAS NO WAY I’D GET THE PART, SO I JUST DECIDED TO GO IN AND HAVE FUN.”

— CHELSEA FREI ON LANDING THE PAPER

Dress SIMKHAI, earrings, ring and bracelets BVLGARI.

Before The Paper, Frei spent two years working on a project she believed might change her career. She was its star. Then the project effectively disappeared before audiences had the opportunity to see it. “It was really hard,” she says. “I was the star of that show, and it’s hard not to feel like you’ve failed.” For years, Frei had put her own writing and creative projects aside. She believed the show would launch her career. When it didn’t, the disappointment forced her to reconsider where she was placing control. “I realized that the only thing you can control in this industry is what you create yourself.”
What changed was not Frei’s ambition, but where she placed it. She returned to creating. She began developing a show of her own and is moving toward production on her first feature. Even the project that disappeared is not something she speaks about entirely with regret. It gave her friendships, experiences, and the chance to live in Argentina and Iceland. “Even though no one got to see it, it’s a very special memory in my life.”
Then came The Paper. Frei did not walk into the audition believing it would be the thing that rescued a carefully constructed career plan. In fact, she was convinced she would not get it. When she auditioned for co-creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, Frei knew she was sitting opposite two people responsible for some of her favorite television. Rather than allowing that knowledge to overwhelm her, she decided there was very little to lose. “I thought there was NO way I’d get the part, so I just decided to go in and have fun,” she says. “All I wanted was to leave the room feeling like I had a great time.” She got the part. “I think that energy probably led to a good audition, and I always remember that.”
The result was Mare Pritti, a character Frei has now had the opportunity not only to establish, but to watch change. “Mare is someone I adore, learn from, and also try to challenge,” she says. Some of Mare’s flaws are recognizable enough that Frei occasionally finds herself thinking, “Oh my god, get out of your own way.” For a series centered on a struggling local newspaper, there is also an unexpectedly personal connection. Frei’s grandmother worked full time at the Andover Townsman while raising three children as a single mother. Frei remembers a woman who made an extraordinarily difficult balancing act appear almost ordinary. She also remembers how much the newspaper meant to her. “She deeply loved the paper and the people she worked with,” Frei says. “I remember her saying how they took such good care of her, and were her second family. I always think about that in relation to the Truth Teller.”

Years later, Frei finds herself inside a fictional newsroom where work, ambition and personal relationships are similarly difficult to separate. And in The Paper, everybody seems to want something. Mare often finds herself holding her ground amid larger personalities, including Sabrina Impacciatore’s Esmeralda. Frei calls Impacciatore “a comedic genius,” particularly admiring the unpredictability and physicality she brings to the role. For Frei, the challenge can be maintaining Mare’s position as the voice of reason when the people around her are making her want to break. “I just want to laugh,” she admits.
“Everyone is so funny this season!” Season 2 expands that chemistry. With the characters established, the newsroom can fracture into different combinations, alliances, and collisions. Frei speaks enthusiastically about pairings across the ensemble: Travis and Detrick, Nicole and Adelola, Kimberly and Oscar. “I love seeing how everyone interacts with each other,” she says. But familiarity does not mean stability. Success has changed the Truth Teller. Recognition raises the stakes and, as Frei sees it, begins revealing what matters most to the people inside the newsroom. “I think it’s exposing what really matters to everyone,” she says. “It definitely leads to heightened stakes.”

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For Mare, those stakes become personal as well as professional. Frei says her character’s life is upended midway through the season, leaving her to navigate obstacles without always making the right choices. “I think we’ll see her stumble and at times fail,” Frei says, “and hopefully it leads to a much more realized version of who she is.” That imperfection may be where Chelsea Frei and Mare Pritti intersect most interestingly. Neither story is particularly concerned with a perfect ascent. There are wrong turns. There are things that disappear. There are moments when ambition becomes an obstacle of its own. And there is the question of who gets to decide what happens next.

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For Frei, the answer increasingly comes back to creation. The success of The Paper has not made her abandon the lesson she learned when another project disappeared. Acting remains central to her life, but so does ownership of the ideas that originate with her. “It’s the only real control you have in this industry,” she says. “I’m really excited to begin pre-production on something that is totally mine really soon!”
Away from all of it, Frei lives in Venice, and when she is not working, the thing she wants most is uncomplicated: walking the boardwalk with her husband and dog. “It’s my favorite thing in the world.” Perhaps that is why her story resists the usual mythology of arrival. Frei has achieved something she wanted since the third grade, but success has not turned the journey into a straight line. If anything, it has taught her to become more comfortable with the detours.

Photography Phil x Sara (Agency BAM), Styling Oretta Corbelli (Honey Artists), Hair Eddie Cook using Roz Hair (A-Frame Agency), Makeup Loren Canby using Armani Beauty (A-Frame Agency), Talent Chelsea Frei (Viewpoint), Documented in Los Angeles, CA.

“ IT’S A JOY TO PLAY, AND I HOPE I GET TO COME BACK AND SEE WHERE SHE GOES!”

— CHELSEA FREI ON MARE’S NEXT CHAPTER

The Paper produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

Every newsroom has two stories. The one that gets published and the one unfolding behind it. The Paper understands that distinction well. Ambition, competition, loyalty, and ego all occupy the same room, while everyone is chasing their version of the truth. Chelsea Frei’s Mare lives inside that tension without needing to be the loudest voice in it. For VESTAL, that made her particularly interesting. As the series enters its second season, we wanted to look beyond the headlines and toward the person navigating everything happening between them.

— KEVIN SINCLAIR

OFFICIAL TRAILER

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THE PAPER SEASON 2 AVAILABLE NOW ON PEACOCK

Cast Chelsea Frei, Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Tim Key, Ramona Young, Eric Rahill, Duane Shepard Sr., Alex Edelman and Oscar Nuñez. Co-Creators and Executive Producers Greg Daniels and Michael Koman. Executive Producers Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Howard Klein, Ben Silverman and Banijay Americas (formerly Reveille). Production Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.