Nikki Griffin: The Nicest Bad Girl on TV
Troublemaker, drug addict and partier are all terms that accurately describe Nikki Griffin’s character, Jess Sathers, on The O.C. While Griffin may play the part of the bad girl to perfection, this sweet and humble beauty couldn’t be more different from her character. After taking a hiatus from the hit Fox drama, Griffin is back, and this time she hopes to show audiences a different side of Jess. “My character is trying to change and reform her ways,” Griffin says. “So it’s fun to step back into the role and take her to a place she hasn’t been before.”
Despite The O.C.’s popularity, Griffin tells me fans rarely approach her when she’s out in public. “My character on The O.C. was never a very nice girl, and while I realize that people know the show’s not real, I think there’s still that feeling of, ‘She must not be a very nice girl.’ [Laughs]. I think it kind of carries over.”
Besides her small-screen work on The O.C., this summer Griffin will appear on the big screen in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.” Griffin explains that this installment of the franchise is not simply a rehashing of the first two movies. “This film depicts a whole different style of racing,” she says. “The street racing from the first two installments was drag racing. This racing is called drifting, which means the car is mostly sideways the whole time. Plus, this one has all new characters.”
Griffin describes her character as a “bad girl” who sets the storyline into motion. “I’m the instigator who starts off the whole movie,” she says. “[The main character] gets in trouble because of me and has to go to Tokyo.”
Griffin’s love of cars made the movie a perfect fit for her, but to her disappointment, the filmmakers didn’t let her get behind the wheel of any of the film’s fast cars. “I love driving,” she proclaims, “and I hope to one day do some stunt driving. When we did the Dukes of Hazzard, Sean William Scott went to driving school, and he was telling me about it. I was like, ‘God, I can’t wait. I want to go to driving school.’ That would be so much fun.”
When it comes to her own car, Griffin admits she has an obsessive-compulsive tendency about locking her car doors. “I wear out the batteries on my keyless remote,” she jokes. “I walk ten feet away and forget if I locked it. So, maybe I actually have a short-term memory problem. [Laughs].”
Even for people with a bad short-term memory, Griffin’s combination of beauty, charm and acting skill makes her an unforgettable face in Hollywood.
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