The Tamesis
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Fashion Germany. Please read the translated and edited version below.
“My German is not good, but I love speaking German with you,” says Fashion Germany’s May 2026 cover star Simone Ashley speaks with stunning clarity and smiles for the zoom camera. We soon find out that the actor is a Germanophile – she even met her best friend Pia in Munich.
A few weeks after the magazine shot its cover in London, Ashley wore a gray hoodie on a video call—her athletic look because after our call she would be heading straight into strength training in preparation for the Brooklyn Half Marathon in late April.
It’s been a big month for the actress and musician: On April 10, she released her debut EP, Songs I wrote in New York, On April 20, she attended ” The Devil Wears Prada 2in which she plays Amali, the assistant to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley.
This is Ashley’s role as Olivia Hanan in the hit Netflix series sex education This first brought her fame and led to her big break as Kate Sharma in Kate Sharma. bridgeton, Starring alongside actor Jonathan Bailey. her performance in the play bridgeton Ashley’s career has gone from strength to strength, landing her on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and the TIME 100, in addition to numerous award nominations.
But today, it looks like Ashley, 31, is about to start a new chapter — she says below Fashion That’s the way it is in Germany.
Fashion DE: You can’t reveal too much about your character yet, but can you tell us what it was like working with all these movie legends?
Simon Ashley: I was mainly with Meryl and Stanley. We shot the first half on the streets of Manhattan, which was crazy. We shot in the studio track office and then we went to Milan. I learned a lot by watching how everyone worked. They’re just masters in their field; they’ve been doing it for years.
This movie changed my life as I spent one of the best summers of my life with David [Frankel, the director] and Erin Brosh McKenna [the producer and screenwriter] and all the producers and crew, and all in New York. It also felt a bit like an acting master class, just watching all of them and how they conveyed their characters and how they fit into the world The queen wears prada. Because it’s a very specific world – New York fashion, and that hyper-real yet subtle and chic tone.
