It all started with a casting disaster.

Netflix had already greenlit Ginny & Georgia, and Brianne Howey was locked in as the fierce, unpredictable, heartbreakingly layered Georgia Miller. But the showrunners hit a massive roadblock: they couldn’t find her younger version.

Hundreds of auditions poured in. Too soft. Too forced. Too polished. None of them were Georgia — not the wild, sharp-eyed, lightning-in-a-bottle teenager who could survive a violent home, charm a con artist, and still smile like she owned the world. They needed fire wrapped in trauma. And no one had it.

Until she walked in.

Nikki Roumel wasn’t even the producers’ first choice. In fact, she wasn’t scheduled for that day. Legend says she was there supporting a friend — yes, a friend’s audition. She wasn’t dressed to impress. No makeup. A thrifted jacket. Barely glanced at the camera when she stepped into the waiting room.

But the second she opened her mouth — unscripted, off-book, and full of raw emotion — the room froze.

“She was Georgia,” one casting director reportedly whispered.

Still, it wasn’t that simple.

Netflix execs pushed back. She didn’t have the credits. She was too unknown. Could she carry the weight of Georgia’s backstory — the abuse, the survival, the crime, the seduction — without turning it into a soap opera?

Producers begged for a screen test with Brianne Howey. When the two finally stood side by side in a dim hallway outside a closed set, they looked at each other and laughed — same smile, same edge, same wild spark.

“They looked like they’d been split in time,” a crew member later said.

What sealed it wasn’t just the looks. It was the darkness Nikki brought underneath the surface — a girl who could gut you with a stare and still leave you rooting for her. She wasn’t acting. She was surviving.

Within 24 hours, Nikki Roumel had the role.

And just like that, a Netflix star was born — not in a polished casting call, not through an agent’s push, but in a twist of fate straight out of a drama script.

From accidental audition to fan-favorite flashback scenes, Nikki didn’t just play young Georgia.

She became her.