On a recent visit to New York City, 11-year-old Rio Lewis walked into the American Girl doll store with her family and was shocked to see her face on banners for the brand’s newest character all around the shop.
“One mom and a little girl, they’re like, ‘Hey, you know what? You kind of look like Claudie.’ And I was like, ‘I am Claudie!’” Lewis told the Tribune.
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Lewis, of Hinsdale, is the model for the brand’s newest character, Claudie Wells, featured in the hardcover book “Meet Claudie, An American Girl” written by New York Times bestselling author of “The Vanishing Half” Brit Bennett, and illustrated by Laura Freeman.
“It’s really amazing, because I get to tell people, ‘Hey, I’m the face of the new American Girl,’” Lewis said.
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In the doll’s book, the character grows up in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the early 1920s, when Black artistry thrived. According to the American Girl website, Claudie is surrounded by “writers and poets, painters and sculptors, actors and dancers, singers and musicians” and is trying to figure out how she fits into the world around her.
Lewis, a sixth grader, is an artist herself: a dancer, an actress and a musician. She has also been modeling since she was 4 years old, she said.
“It’s really fun because I get to travel to different places and then meet different people and try on different outfits,” Lewis said.
She has been a competitive dancer since she was in first grade — though she began dancing as a 3-year-old. Most recently, she went to Las Vegas in July to compete in the RADIX Nationals with Impact Dance Studio.
As an actress, she’s played a role in an episode of HBO Max’s “South Side,” has starred in local plays and been featured in commercials. She said she has also auditioned to be in a few Broadway shows, including “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Annie.”
Her audition to model as Claudie Wells included sending over snapshots and a video of herself talking about her favorite historical figure or her favorite book. She was torn, her mother said, between talking about Harriet Tubman or the fantasy book series “Keeper of the Lost Cities.” She ended up describing the latter.
After the audition, Lewis withdrew from consideration because the shoot would have taken place during one of her brother’s baseball games out of town, which the family was going to make a trip out of.
But the baseball tournament ended up getting canceled just as Lewis got the part. It takes about eight months to a year between auditions and finalized illustrations, according to Wendy Walsh, the book’s creative manager.
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“This was one of those cases where the model gets on set, puts on the wardrobe, and she IS that character,” Walsh said in an email. “It doesn’t happen all of the time, but in this case it did. We all looked at each other on set and said, ‘That’s her! That’s our Claudie.’”
During the American Girl shoot on her 10th birthday in August 2021, Lewis said, she got to ride on a red scooter like the one the character has in the book.
“For historical characters, we try to find a model that we feel embodies that character in spirit and how we visualize how that character would come to life,” Walsh said.
Lewis said she also got to play a note on the trumpet she posed with. So, once the time to choose an instrument for school band came around, she chose to learn to play the trumpet.
“We’ve kind of gathered pieces of what that character is like, and it is kind of a lot like her, but set back in the Harlem Renaissance,” said Didi Palacios Lewis, the girl’s mother. “I can’t wait for us to read that book.”
She’s “trying to find out who she is, in this time of a bunch of artists and bakers and people who are really good at what they do and she’s trying to find out what she’s best at,” Lewis said.
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In the book, Claudie’s father is a baker, and the character helps him run his bakery. In real life, Lewis’ mother pointed out, Rio also loves to bake — just another similarity between her and the character.
Lewis has collected a couple of other American Girl dolls over the years, including Addy Walker, whose story is centered around escaping slavery.
“I’ve always liked American Girl dolls, because they’re just different from all the other dolls,” the 11-year-old said. “Like, all the other dolls are either really small, have no detail or are just, like, creepy. But American Girl dolls are actually real.”
Lewis said it is an honor to be a part of brand.
“It’s definitely an honor to be the face of an American Girl doll, especially an American Girl doll that touches people’s hearts as much as this doll does, because it’s the first historical doll for like a long time, and also it’s the first Black American Girl doll with a positive back story,” she said.
The doll and book began selling Aug. 23 for a total of $115 on the American Girl website and in stores.
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