Kennedy McMann picked up
a Nancy Drew book when
she was a kid. Practically
every girl in America has
read at least one of the
classic mysteries. What does
feel like a bit more than
coincidence (or dare we say
fate) is how obsessed
Kennedy became.
She didn’t just read all
the novels—she played the
computer games too. She
cowrote a musical in college
and referred to herself as
Nancy Drew in one of the
songs. Later, before the TV
series even existed, her fiancé nicknamed her
“Nancy Drew.”
To Kennedy, Nancy never seemed like just a
fictional character—it almost felt like she
somehow lived inside Kennedy or like they
were the same person: a strong-willed, small-
town girl not afraid to take risks. So yeah, it’s
both crazy and not at all crazy that this, of all
the roles, is her first big one.
O h my g o d , thi s i s my v o i c e. T hi s i s my
brain. This character is ME, Kennedy
says she immediately thought when
reading the script for the first time. “It’s
all very cosmic. If I could have picked
one p e r s on t o p or t r ay, it wo u ld h ave b e e n
her. It gives me shivers to even say that.”
Acting was an escape for Kennedy
when she first started doing community
theater in Arizona at 9 years old (she
played a wench in The Three Musketeers,
as every kid should). She’d been diag-
nosed with obsessive compulsive disor-
der, and her parents thought the stage
would be a good distraction. Kennedy
fell in love with the idea of
replacing her own brain with
that of a character’s, and she’s
been acting ever since. But what
started out as a coping tech-
nique didn’t become a leading-
role situation until she
graduated from college and
landed the part of a lifetime.
Nancy Drew itself will proba-
bly feel a lot different than the
books you grew up with. Within
the first five minutes of the pilot,
Nancy is hooking up with a sexy
criminal. She’s waiting tables at
a diner, and her boss, George (a
woman), is having an affair with a married man
whose wife conveniently ends up murdered. Cue the
first mystery of the season!
It’s basically like Nancy Drew got the Riverdale
treatment. And considering the two shows are airing
back-to-back, the comparisons are unavoidable. They
do both have a campy pulp-movie quality, but Ken-
nedy thinks the biggest difference is the age factor.
The Riverdale k id s a r e s t i l l i n h i g h s cho ol ,
and Nancy and co. are heading to college, so
the problems she and the rest of the charac-
ters face, and the way they handle them, are
slightly more grown up.
“Nancy’s not the prim and proper, per-
fect Nancy Drew you know from the 1930s
books,” says Kennedy. The character isn’t
a f r a id t o ma ke mi s t a ke s a r e g u l a r 19 -ye a r -
old would make. She even looks like a nor-
mal girl—when she breaks into a house in
the first episode, she’s wearing jeans, a
denim jacket, and a beanie. (Kennedy her-
self can pull off basically any outfit; the
fashion spread you’re looking at rn should
be the only receipt you need.) Honestly,
though, The CW could put her in a literal
sack and Kennedy wouldn’t care. When has
anything gotten in Nancy Drew’s way?THIS PAGE
Anna Sui jacket and skirt.
Cosmpolitan X Dress The
Population top. Mark Cross
bag
OPPOSITE PAGE
DKNY top. Choosy pants.
Marc Fisher LTD boots. Ulla
Johnson bag. Kaleos
sunglassesHair: Justine Marjan at The
Wall Group. Makeup:
Allan Avendaño at
Starworks Artists using
Nudestix. Manicure: Emi
Kudo at Opus Beauty using
Chanel Le Vernis. See page
143 for shopping
information.I t ’ s n o t
e x a c t l y
surprising
that
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Cosmopolitan October 2019