A young Hollywood star lives in the heart of Leeuwarden. Zoë Soul (28) currently stars in Netflix hit ‘My life with the Walter Boys’ and has starred in films with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Her love for acting arose in Los Angeles, which she got for black and white through her Frisian mother, short track coach Wilma Boomstra. Boomstra just took a job as national coach of Kazakhstan, Zoë is in the starting blocks for season 2 of Walter Boys . “Culture shock? The Dutch are great, but sometimes blunt.”
Both women are sitting in the winter sun in front of Zoë’s historic home on the Eewal in the center of Leeuwarden. It is a short intermezzo for mother and daughter; This weekend Boomstra has to go to Kazakhstan again. Zoë estimates that she still has a month or two before she has to go to Calgary for the continuation of the hit series. My life revolves around a girl who moves from New York to rural Colorado to a large family – with many boys – and to a new high school. Soul plays the girlfriend of the eldest member of the Walter family, the only one who no longer lives at home.
Acknowledgment
In Soul’s bedroom, a card from Netflix with a word of thanks for the actress reminds us of the Hollywood connection. It is not by far the craziest collision between the down-to-earth Friesland and the craziness that the film world sometimes represents, mother and daughter remember laughing. “As a teenager I already played in a series with Malcolm-Jamal Warner, people still know him as Theo from The Cosby Show . That series was filmed in Atlanta and my mother often had to be in Los Angeles for my brother and her school.”
Wilma adds. “But Zoë was fourteen, someone had to care about her. So the film company arranged a large limousine to drive to my parents in Sint Jacobiparochie. My mother was loaded and transported to Schiphol in all luxury. And then picked up again in Atlanta by the next limousine. Well, I know from my mother that the neighbors were surprised.”
The Boomstra family, in addition to Wilma and Zoë there is also younger brother Q, lived in Los Angeles when the actress was young. Wilma started a short track school there in the early 1990s and later worked as a national coach of the American short track teams.
“I left her father with Zoë when she was about five years old. A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant with Q. I felt guilty and I think I overcompensated a bit. Even though I was on my own, the children were never allowed to lack anything. So if Zoe wanted to dance at Debbie Allen’s school ( Fame , ed.) then I brought her. Q was really into basketball, but he trained all the way on the other side of LA. And of course I also had to be at my own school. The highways were always full, it drove you crazy. I often didn’t get home until eleven o’clock at night, but both Zoë and Q were able to follow their passions.”
It was by no means self-evident that acting would become Zoë’s passion. “I was a shy child, but I loved to dance. I had a talent for that, but I lacked expression. Acting lessons were supposed to solve that. My mother really had to drag me away, I cried and screamed, but three hours later I was sold. Acting became my world.”
“The sitcom with Malcolm, Read Between the Lines , was kind of a breakthrough for me. What my mother says is correct, Grandma Feikje was a real support and support. Later, when we saw the movie Prisoners made, with not only Hugh Jackman but also greats such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, my grandmother was also pretty much the grandmother for everyone on the set. I am very grateful to both my grandmother Feikje and grandfather Taeke. Without them and my mother, none of this would have come to this.”
The connection with her Frisian roots is so strong that Soul, now a mature actress who makes her own money, ended up in Leeuwarden. Is that possible, with a career in distant Hollywood? “Covid has changed a lot. Nowadays you often audition with a band that you record yourself. My role in Walter Boys I got it that way too. So escaping the merry-go-round of life in LA and still staying relevant just got a little easier. I briefly considered going to Amsterdam, but my heart lies more in Leeuwarden. Smaller, not all the hustle and bustle and quickly familiar. People say hello to you a week after you move in, as if you have known them for years. My neighbor in LA doesn’t know who I am yet. The Dutch are special people. Candid and engaging, sometimes a bit blunt. But I prefer that to the less than sincere thing you encounter elsewhere.”
Ice rink
What about skating, does Soul still have an affinity for that? “I grew up at the ice rink. At our house there were always these half-undressed young athletes that my mother trained. My friends thought it was wonderful, I didn’t like it at all. Haha. I love Dutch black and white licorice and I love a bami slice. But unfortunately I don’t have the skating gene.”