Alumni Joey Odom '19 and Manuela Sosa '19 Featured in Season Two of 'Dickinson'

By
Amanda Breen
February 02, 2021

Season two of the dark comedy Dickinson features Acting alumni Joey Odom ’19 and Manuela Sosa ’19. Both Odom and Sosa appear in the first episode, Odom as Archibald and Sosa as Young Woman #2. 

Created by Alena Smith and starring Hailee Steinfeld, Dickinson follows the titular poet as she navigates restrictive gender and family norms in 19th-century Amherst, Massachusetts. According to the New York Times, “The series drops you into a version of the 1850s so deliberately anachronistic in tone that you might expect someone to whip an iPhone out of the folds of her gown. Hip-hop bumps on the soundtrack; characters binge “Bleak House” as if it were a Netflix serial.”

The show’s first season includes encounters with Louisa May Alcott (Zosia Mamet), who criticizes Nathaniel Hawthorne and brainstorms the plot for her lucrative novel Little Women over Christmas dinner, and Henry David Thoreau (John Mulaney), whose privileged ability to shirk responsibility and take up residence on Walden Pond under the guise of newfound independence plays to great comedic effect. 

The show’s second season grapples with the real-life mystery at its center. The enormously talented Dickinson published only a few poems and spent her later years in seclusion, rejecting fame completely—why?

An Oxnard, California native, Odom received a BA in Sociology and Theatre from UC San Diego before attending the School of the Arts. He has worked as an actor in LA and New York in theatre, web shorts, and music videos. His roles have included Tybalt in Jeffrey Page’s Romeo & Juliet (Classical Theatre of Harlem) and Puck in Midsummer’s Night Dream (Rose ‘N Thorns Productions), among others.

A Venezuelan-American raised in Canada, Sosa is a trilingual actor who splits her time between Vancouver and New York City. Before attending the School of the Arts, she received a BFA in French and Theatre from Simon Fraser University. She has performed on New York City and Vancouver stages, and her roles have included Nurse in Jeffrey Page’s Romeo & Juliet (Classical Theatre of Harlem) and Stella in Pedro Chamale’s Mis Papás (rice&beanstheatre), among others. 

The first two seasons of Dickinson are available to stream on Apple TV+.