At a time when fans’ emotions are running on high, Showtime star actress Hadley Robinson has the weighty task of reviving an epic chapter of Lakers lore. A recent Juilliard grad, Robinson admits she went into forthcoming HBO sports saga as a b-ball novice.“I fall in love with new things on a daily basis, but sports was [never one of them]!” she says. The child of a dean and a dyed-in-the-wool good student, Robinson also prepared by inhaling half-a-dozen sports podcasts in order to play Lakers owner and former prodigy GM Jeanie Buss, who, as a 20-something in the ’80s, orchestrated a myth-making spree of wins and talent acquisition.

As a kid, Robinson, now 25, was something of a prodigy herself, poring over iambic pentameter in lieu of YA. “I am dyslexic, but for some reason, Shakespeare made more sense to me than [anything],” she says. “I could memorize it almost immediately.” And last summer, Robinson wrote and directed her first film, a feminist riff on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, catalyzed by an outmoded Beckett-estate policy denying women from playing any of the play’s four characters. “It’s [still] a very controversial [debate], but I felt it would be so interesting to [include] female characters. I wrote [the film] in response [to that],” Robinson explains. “It became its own thing, about the nuances of young love between girlfriends. It’s my baby!”

The U.K.-raised multi-talent has encountered plenty of role models in her swift Hollywood rise; in addition to Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, in which she played the young socialite Sallie Moffat, two of Robinson’s upcoming projects are women-led: the sci-fi series Utopia from Gillian Flynn, and Moxie, a Netflix comedy directed by Amy Poehler. If female leadership is still something of an industry rarity, Robinson is committed to keeping up the team spirit.“I want to make a habit out of [working with female creators],” she says.“It’s just good to have women at the forefront.