Long known as the sexy sidekick to the boys of Entourage, Emmanuelle Chriqui comes into her own as a bankable Hollywood star when the acclaimed HBO series hits the big screen this June.
Entourage fans, get ready for a wild ride: The upcoming big-screen production of the HBO hit series “is like the biggest, most awesome version of the television show,” says Emmanuelle Chriqui, who plays Sloan McQuewick, the show’s beloved and enduring female standout in a sea of outrageous bros. “It’s shot so beautifully. Doug Ellin really did an amazing job directing this film. It looks so cinematic.”
When the movie picks up (“some opening sequences were shot in Miami”), Sloan, the on-again, off-again love interest (and soon-to-be baby mama) to Kevin Connolly’s character, Eric, “is about to pop,” Chriqui says. “Things are nice between her and Eric; they’re not together but they’re co-parenting. And it unravels, as it always does between them.”
Playing a new mother was “wild,” she reports. “It was really fun to be wearing this plastic belly,” she says. “It makes you waddle; it makes you walk and carry yourself differently. And instinctively, I was constantly touching my belly. It was pretty funny. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is why pregnant people are always rubbing their belly.’”
However, playing the new mother didn’t necessarily translate into her aching to become one herself today. “My dream has always been to adopt, so I’m sure that I will adopt at some point,” she says of her future family plans. “Whether I have some of my own or not kind of remains to be seen.”
Sporting workout pants, sneakers, and a North Face jacket on an unseasonably chilly day in the “real” Los Angeles, Chriqui says that her Entourage character, befitting the overall exaggerated vibe of the show, “is the most glamorous version of myself. I’m a total tomboy in real life—ask anybody who knows me.” Clearly, the actress is being a bit modest—Chriqui looks plenty dazzling, even makeup-free and with her long, dark locks pulled back in a loose ponytail, sipping on a green almond milk smoothie after her morning workout. “Sloan is somebody that I could look at and be like, ‘Wow, I want to be like that; I want to be effortlessly chic and really philanthropic, and I want to breeze through life.’ That would be amazing.”
In truth, that description sounds quite a bit like Chriqui herself. Born in Montreal to Jewish Moroccan immigrants, Chriqui grew up just outside of Toronto, where her childhood dreams of becoming an actress began to take hold at age 10 when she landed her first part, in a McDonald’s commercial. She went on to a series of roles on television and the silver screen, the biggest beyond Entourage being the $200 million-grossing Adam Sandler comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. “My manager always jokes that there’s my career before Entourage and after Entourage,” says Chriqui, 37, who had her first big break in the 2000 big-screen comedy Snow Day. “Looking back, I’m a little bit dumbfounded. It’s like the gift that kept giving for six years.”
Equally as important as that career success are the enduring friendships she’s made over the course of the six years spent filming the HBO series. “To this day, the guys really are like brothers,” she says of her costars—Connolly, Adrian Grenier, Jerry Ferrara, Kevin Dillon, and Jeremy Piven. “Maybe they don’t keep in touch on a daily basis, but I really feel like when we do see each other, it’s like coming home. If I ever needed one of them, I could call and be like, ‘I really need you right now,’ and they would be there.” The feeling is clearly mutual. “She’s just so lovely, intelligent—obviously beautiful—she’s got a good heart,” Grenier tells Ocean Drive. “We’ve always bonded over the years in some of the environmental work that I’ve been doing and she’s certainly doing it as well. There are so many people in the business that are affected, and she’s just real.”
Originally, her character, introduced in season two, was meant to have a three-episode arc, but over the years became a part of the fabric of the show. Sloan McQuewick resonated with viewers, and provided a sort of antidote to the high-octane antics of the group of testosterone-fueled Hollywood high rollers the show chronicles. “She represented something stable, a groundedness,” says Chriqui of her character. “Even though she came from Hollywood royalty, she was not jaded. She’s the kind of person that a lot of people would aspire to [be]—mainly, she’s a good person, whereas the show showed every color of the spectrum of our industry, which isn’t always so nice. There was almost a bit of relief when it came to Sloan.”
Chriqui imbued the role with a palpable gravity, an understated poise that she refers to as “being in your power as a woman.” That, she says, is a theme in her life that has really served her on screen and off. “When you can walk through life feeling confident and feeling good about yourself—whether you [weigh] an extra five pounds or not—and it comes from deep within, that is really powerful.”
The actress’s latest project couldn’t be more of a departure from the glitzy streets of Miami and Hollywood: TNT’s Murder in the First, which kicked off its second season on April 15. “I’m so excited to be a part of this show,” says Chriqui, who binge-watched the first season over the holidays. The character, a half-Israeli/half-Mexican sergeant in a gang unit who spent time in the Israeli army, is “a total badass. She’s super guarded and doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve. I’m just discovering who she is, and that is so exciting for me as an actor.”
Equally exciting for Chriqui are the philanthropy projects to which she dedicates her time off the set. “I’ve started working with this amazing organization called I Am That Girl, to empower young women and let them know that they are powerful and they are incredible and they can change the way that they feel about themselves and therefore change the world. And I really believe that.”
Chriqui also invests her time and effort in Raise Hope for Congo. “It’s just the most dangerous place in the world for women to exist; they use rape as a weapon of warfare. It’s terrifying,” she says. “And yet, these women there, their strength and their courage are something that we can learn from. They create these communities where they help each other, and they want their voices to be heard, so it’s really this very strong theme in my life. The more that I learn and the more that I grow, the more being in my power is everything.”
She had an important early role model in terms of finding her inner strength: her mother, who passed away when Chriqui was 16, after a long battle with cancer. “My mother was a very powerful woman. And she always encouraged me to go after my dreams,” she remembers. “She said to me when I was 13, ‘You’re going to become an actress for the both of us.’ My mother had a flair for dramatics and was very beautiful as a young woman, and I believe the story goes that she was asked to be Miss Casablanca, but in a very traditional Jewish home, that was not okay.”
“I always had this very strong support. It wasn’t until I was older that I was really able to appreciate the gift that she had left me in a short amount of time: everything from cooking and setting a beautiful table and just the tradition of being a fighter,” Chriqui continues. “My mother was such a fighter. The cancer just devoured her, but to the last moment she fought and lived life; two weeks before her death, even though it would take her four hours to get ready, she was very coquettish and she was getting ready and you’d ask, ‘You need help, Mom?’ And she’d say, ‘Nope.’ She was going to do it on her own. And those are the kind of things that when I least expect it, I remember them and go, ‘Wow.’”
When Chriqui was in her early twenties, her father and stepmother set down roots in South Florida, where they bought a place in Delray Beach. “Every time I’d visit, I’d of course have to hit Miami,” says the star, who admits to having toasted a few wild New Year’s Eves in town, and loves the art scene and the city’s laid-back vibe (“Everything’s easy here!” she says).
Although raised in El Salvador, her boyfriend, actor Adrian Bellani, was born in Miami and still has relatives in the area, so these days, Miami is as much about family time for Chriqui as it is relaxation. She raves about an entire week spent being pampered at Canyon Ranch and enjoying the city’s fare, whether that’s at the more upscale Soho Beach House or the many great Cuban mom-and-pop places where she indulges in “a good café con leche with condensed milk—when else do you ever [get] that?”