Diana is the cover star of Harper’s Bazaar Australia/New Zealand! The January-February 2022 issue will be on Australian newsstands Monday, December 20. Check out the photoshoot and article below.
Photo Sessions > Photoshoots from 2021 > Session 012
Diana Silvers on female role models and acting on gut instincts
Meet DIANA SILVERS. From CALIFORNIA COOL GIRL to Hollywood star, the model turned actor has had a whirlwind few years. She lets loose on a day in NEW YORK with CASS BIRD, one of fashion’s favourite photographers
HARPER’S BAZAAR – THINGS COULD HAVE gone differently for Diana Silvers. Two days before the actor auditioned for her first major movie, Ma — a horror flick about six teenagers who ask a stranger to buy them alcohol before finding out the woman is all sorts of crazy — her family home burned down in one of the largest wildfires in Californian history. It was December 2017, and Silvers, then a junior at New York University, was studying for her finals when she abruptly left the city to be with her family in Los Angeles.
The wildfire consumed more than 93,000 acres of land, took more than 1000 buildings, and erased everything she had ever owned. “The weird thing about the fire, for me, was that if it hadn’t have happened, I literally would not have had an acting career,” Silvers says over Zoom, her long legs crossed and boyish-brown hair tucked into the hood of her grey university-style Erewhon sweatshirt by the LA streetwear brand Pizzaslime. She explained that there was simply no way in hell her parents would have allowed her to fly home in the middle of finals for a casting call, so if she hadn’t already been in town, she wouldn’t have auditioned. “I went into the room with this no fucks given attitude because I literally had nothing more to lose.”
Her co-star, the Academy Award-winning actor Octavia Spencer, who plays the desperate and deranged mother figure in Tate Taylor’s film, interpreted the rookie’s blasé attitude as “raw talent” mixed with “incredible instincts”, she says. “She reminded me of a young Julia Roberts,” Spencer continues. “I had no idea that she’d never acted but I was certain that she would need proper representation. That’s why I introduced her to my [agents] at the time. I expect big things from her.”
To be clear, big things came for Silvers, 24, and fast. The same year she played Cheerleading Girl in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2019 Glass, she had her star turn as Hope in actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde’s breakout coming-of-age film, Booksmart. Talk about no fucks given: her performance as the impossibly cool high schooler who dons Levi’s and a vintage fringe suede jacket, hates school and hates parties and yet still gets the girl (Kaitlyn Dever’s Amy) would make bad boy John Bender of The Breakfast Club blush. Silvers was only in a few scenes — she was filming another project at the same time and simply couldn’t be on set for more than a handful of days — but she made her mark nonetheless, a feat she credits to Wilde, who is “literally the coolest person and the future of film”.
Not long after Booksmart was released, Ma hit theaters to rave reviews. Next came Space Force, the 2020 workplace comedy series co-created by Steve Carell. Silvers plays Carell and Lisa Kudrow’s seriously over-it teenage daughter, Erin. “I just remember thinking I don’t even care if I get this,” says Silvers of the audition opposite The Office star for the Netflix original series, which returns for a second season in early 2022. “The truth is, I was just happy that I got to spend 20 minutes with Steve Carell. And I’m still just always happy to be in the room.”
A tennis champ and accomplished photographer, Diana Silvers’s it-factor is multifaceted. While her onscreen presence was limited prior to January’s Glass, it’s poised to triple by year’s end thanks to back-to-back appearances in Ma, Booksmart and Eve. “People tell me everything’s going to change and to be careful, but you can’t worry about what might happen or you’d just go insane,” Silvers says. “When the Ma trailer came out, [it made me] super, super anxious. But then I realized that, at the end of the day, you’re still yourself. As long as you’re happy with that person, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.”
