Being a music nerd as a kid prepared Kiersey Clemons for her rock-star role on-screen
WHEN she was 12, Kiersey Clemons announced that she wanted to be an actress. Her mother responded by getting her a singing coach.
The lessons were “like opera,” the 24-year-old Florida native tells The Post. “Like, learning songs in different languages. I think my mom was just trying to broaden my range.”
It’s paying off. In “Hearts Beat Loud,” opening Friday, Clemons plays Sam, a Brooklyn teen who, the summer before heading to college, forms a band with her dad (Nick Offerman), the disgruntled owner of a record store. And while she doesn’t have to launch into any Italian arias, her crystalclear soprano — and charm — sell the musical’s dreamy synth-pop melodies.
“It was hard, because I had to make everything look so incredibly effortless,” says Clemons of her complete 180 from the opera and show tunes of her youth. “But this is my third time playing a person that’s in a band . . . My mother was very smart.”
Sam may be her first leading role, but Clemons is hardly an unknown. She exploded onto the scene three years ago, playing a nerdy lesbian who gets involved in high-stakes drugdealing in the indie smash flick “Dope.” Now she’s making her off-Broadway debut in Eve Ensler’s “Fruit Trilogy,” running through June 23. The next time you see her on-screen will be as the plucky journalist Iris West in DC Comics’ upcoming “The Flash.”
She grew up in Pensacola, Fla., the oldest of four girls in a biracial family that loved karaoke and performing for each other. “Once I was old enough to realize that the people I thought were inside the TV were actual people, it was like, ‘I want to do that,’ ” she says.
But Clemons didn’t quite anticipate the attention that came her way after “Dope” debuted at Sundance in early 2015. Although she was barely out of her teens, interviewers asked if she was a lesbian, like her character.
“I remember at the time being so freaked out, like, ‘I don’t know!’” recalls the actress, who considers herself bisexual. “To ask someone so young to define their sexuality like that ... you’re asking them something they may not have an answer to.”
In “Hearts Beat Loud,” Clemons has several tender love scenes with actress Sasha Lane. “We are good friends, so it was cozy and all good,” Clemons says.
These days, she says, she feels more secure in her identity, embracing her role as a hero for queer, biracial girls like herself, and sharing pics of her girlfriend on Instagram.
“There’s nothing for me to hide,” she says. “I think it’s just our responsibility as humans [to be open] so that everyone else feels more comfortable showing themselves.” Now based in Los Angeles, Clemons says she’s enjoying her time in New York City. After exploring all the coffee shops in Red Hook with her “Hearts Beat Loud” co-stars — she calls Offerman a “warm and fuzzy goofball” — she’s embracing life in Manhattan.
“All the cafes and bars are just so pretty and enticing,” says Clemons, who finds she tends to eat and drink more here than back in LA. “I’m more of a functioning human being in New York — it makes you get off your butt.”