Daniella Perkins On Speaking Your Truth And Owning Your Look

Knight Squad stars Daniella Perkins and Lilimar play total opposites on-screen. But off-camera, these determined, talented and intelligent young women prove they’re more alike than you might think—and together they make fashion magic in spring’s high-voltage trends.

- Sydney Adamson

Daniella Perkins is in a car on the way home from her GL photo shoot and she’s telling us all about her childhood. Spoiler alert: She was a total ham.

As a kid, Daniella loved acting in made-up plays and dancing around with her little sister, Devenity. Their stage was the most exclusive in town: their living room. And their audience was made up of a pair of day-one stans: their mom and grandmother.

“I’d make my mom record me 24/7—I had to have the camera on me,” the 18-year-old star of Nickelodeon’s Knight Squad explains. “In front of my family, I was always out there.”

Those impromptu performances created a happy, safe space for Daniella. But her life was less than perfect. She was shy around most people (“Even then, I think I was scared of what others truly thought of me,” she explains). And with her mom raising the girls on her own— Daniella hasn’t seen her dad since she was 8—they had their share of struggles.

“I’ve been through some tough things, but I feel like it has all made me a stronger person,” Daniella says. “My mom has always told me that just because you have a single parent, it doesn’t make you any less than a person who has both parents. She’s the reason I have all that I have now.”

It was this determination, plus a solid work ethic and tons of talent, that helped launch Daniella into the spotlight. Eventually, she graduated from her homegrown skits to an actual musical theater group, nailing performances in “The Sound of Music,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “The Wizard of Oz.”