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Paulina Alexis
Born	(2000-09-10) September 10, 2000 Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation Reserve, Alberta, Canada
Other names	Wagiya Cizhan/Young Eagle
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2020–present
Known for	Reservation Dogs, Bones of Crows, Ghostbusters Afterlife, Beans (2020 film)

Paulina Alexis (born in Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation Reserve, Alberta, Canada, September 10, 2000), also known as Wagiya Cizhan/Young Eagle is a Canadian actress best known for her role as Willie Jack in Reservation Dogs. She won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series in 2022 and in 2023 was nominated for the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. The series won a Peabody Award.

Personal life

Paulina Alexis says that she never thought that she'd be an actor "because I'm Native". Alexis has said that she's proud of having signed with a talent agency when she was twelve years old, but she didn't tell her friends and family about her acting dreams because she thought they'd tease her about it. Alexis went to many auditions for advertisements and films, but she never quit trying, and just after her eighteenth birthday in 2018 had her first successful audition for "Ghostbusters: Afterlife". Alexis admitted to not having done her research, going into the audition blindly, and was shocked to see Jason Reitman, an original producer and director of the Ghostbusters series, across from her. Reitman thought that Alexis was funny during the audition, and saw her as fitting for the roller-skating waitress Bunny in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife". When the film began shooting in 2019, Alexis was offered a small, non-speaking "principle rate role" as Bunny, but it was her first acting gig, and she was amazed by the multi-million dollar production set.

Paulina Alexis' next role was as April, a sweetheart who lost her mother and became a bully living with her abusive father, in the award-winning film "Beans (2020)", a semi-autobiographical story written and directed by Tracey Deer (Mohawk) about the so-called "Oka Crisis", or Kanesatake Resistance, which claimed "Best Picture" at the 2021 Canadian Screen Awards. In the film "Beans" Alexis' character April teaches the main character Beans, played by young Mohawk girl Kiawentiio, how to toughen herself up. Some of April's methods seem to be abusive, but her justification is "if you don't feel pain, nothing can hurt you." Alexis said that being on the set of "Beans" was incredibly fun, Deer allowed her to improvise some of her lines, and she met her future "Reservation Dogs" co-star D'Pharaoh Woon-a-tai who played her brother in the film. Alexis has said that being on the set of "Beans" prepared her for "Reservation Dogs".

Paulina Alexis admitted to being very nervous during her audition for "Reservation Dogs". She claimed to be "star-struck" by co-creators Sterlin Harjo (Muskogee/Seminole) and Taika Waititi (Maori), because she'd grown watching 1491s, an American Indian comedy troupe led by Harjo that have been making skits for Native audiences more than a decade. Alexis said that when she auditioned for Elora, originally the only female lead written for "Reservation Dogs", she got emotional going up against Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (Mohawk), who'd been Alexis' idol since she was a little girl. However the creators thought that she'd be perfect for the character Willie Jack. Originally intended to be a male character, the showrunners transformed Willie Jack into a non-binary female character, and Alexis played a key role in developing Willie Jack's appearance, wardrobe, and her personality. Paulina Alexis has said straightforwardly: "I am Willie Jack". Even her father Robbie Alexis claimed: "All you need to do is turn the camera on, and it's just Paulina being herself." Although she is not a writer on "Reservation Dogs", Alexis has been given almost "carte blanche" for developing Willie Jack, and she has the intention of writing, producing, and directing her own productions. In the first season of "Reservation Dogs" Willie Jack was a confrontational graffiti-tagging spitfire, during the second season Willie Jack focused on her own healing and having to cope with the suicide of her cousin Daniel, then during the third and final season Willie Jack has shown that she is en route to becoming a medicine woman. Alexis considers herself to be the prototypical "rez-kid", or as she said to much applause on the "Tonight Show": "[Reservation Dogs] wanted rez-kids, they got rez kids." Alexis describes Willie Jack's look as "hippie-cowgirl vibes, cozy queen" who always has two braids and her Urban Native Era hat on backwards. Fans have praised Willie Jack for being the most relatable character, which she said was her intention: "Everyone knows a Willie Jack. You'll find her on every rez."

Alexis found out that she got the role of Willie Jack at a hockey game at the end of 2019. She was jumping for joy, but a few months later when production for "Reservation Dogs" was supposed to begin in March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began and the release of "Reservation Dogs" was delayed for a year until August 9, 2021. Alexis said that everything had been going great on set during the filming of the pilot, and that she'd spent half of her time "fan-girling Devery, Sterlin, and 1491s", and the rest of the time playing Willie Jack, but when the scene for Daniel's memorial came on the last day of shooting the pilot, Alexis said that day was "surprisingly hard". Paulina Alexis has a lot of experience with suicide. Native Americans in the U.S. and Canada have suicide rates many times higher than the national average, at least 2.5 in the U.S. and 3 times higher in Canada. "Reservation Dogs" has brought Alexis a lot of healing, who said in an interview: "There have been times I haven't wanted to be here either." After finishing the filming of "Reservation Dogs" Season 2, especially Episode 9 'Offerings' when she acted across from Lily Gladstone (Blackfeet), Alexis there was one scene that was momentous for her. Willie Jack was surrounded by Native elders in a way that helped her to break the curse that the season centered around. Between 2021 and 2022 alone Paulina Alexis lost three friends and her cousin Gia to suicide, who took her life while listening to "Time After Time" by Cindy Lauper. Hearing that song played during the end credits of 'Offerings' was surreal for Alexis. In a "Reservation Dogs: Inside Look" from FX Networks, Paulina Alexis said: "You're doing it for those kids. It makes me feel good. It doesn't really make me feel that sad anymore. It feels like I'm doing something about it." In fact recently a Native girl came up to Alexis, and told her: "You saved my life." When Paulina Alexis gave her acceptance speech for "Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series" from the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards, she dedicated her performance to "all of our families and communities back home, and all the rez kids, and all the Daniels that never got to."

Alexis has said that nearly all of Willie Jack's lines are improvisational, and when she got the scripts, they'd have hardly any lines for her. Alexis asked creator Sterlin Harjo what she should say, and his answer was: "Say whatever you want!" Alexis learned during the "Reservation Dogs" Season One shoot that she can't rehearse, because most of her lines are improvisation, and she has to be totally "natural". Sometimes Paulina Alexis would call her brother and fellow actor Nathan Alexis about lines and jokes for Willie Jack to say that they thought would make Native people laugh. Alexis told Jimmy Fallon on the "Tonight Show": "Our [Indigenous] people are so funny. It's just never been shown before." Alexis insists that she is representing all of "Turtle Island", an American Indian reference to the land mass of the Western Hemisphere, which Indigenous peoples of the Americas almost universally agree is shaped like a turtle.

Alexis also tried crossing over her love of horses into her "Reservation Dogs" character Willie Jack, and despite creator Sterlin Harjo claiming that he'd put her on a horse, the story line didn't pan out before the series ended. However Alexis is taking the horse-racing idea that she had for future seasons of "Reservation Dogs", and putting them into her own future projects, as she is currently writing a few stories of her own that Alexis describes as "raw, wholesome, and funny".