The Singular Sarah Jane Nader

On a freezing Monday in January, Sarah Jane Nader walks into Blonde Studios in Chelsea, Manhattan, immediately bringing the warmth. “Hi! I’m Sarah Jane,” she says brightly, hugging everyone gathered for her photo shoot. “It’s so great to meet you. I’m so excited about this.”

She settles in by the mirror and starts touching up her makeup, promptly getting lipstick on her cream-colored satin blouse. Undeterred, the 23-year-old model laughs it off and covers the stain strategically for the cameras. It’s clear she’s a seasoned pro at this, a woman in her element ready to show up and work.

Nader is fresh off a girls weekend in Cabo with her older sister Brooks, where she replenished on vitamin D and built up an enviable tan that defies NYC’s cold, gray weather. “Cabo was the perfect recharge,” she says. “I just love being in a swimsuit barefoot all the time.” Now she’s back home in the city and hitting the ground running with photo shoots. “I’ve been working nonstop, which has been so great and such a blessing. I feel like my mental health is better when I’m busy.”

A lot has changed for Nader in the last six months, since her Hulu reality show Love Thy Nader came out in August and skyrocketed her public profile. The series follows her and her three older sisters — Baton Rouge natives now living together between NYC and L.A. as models and entrepreneurs — who often butt heads over their relationships and personal space.

Sarah Jane is the youngest and most Gen Z coded of the group, with an irreverent sense of humor, ’90s-inspired aesthetic, and open-minded attitude about identity and sexuality. Much of Season 1 focuses on her dating life, as she comes into her queerness after growing up in a Southern, religious environment where she felt pressure to conform. “I’m really glad that it all came to fruition when it did,” Nader says of the show, which was in talks for three years before it was officially picked up by Hulu. “At that time, I was not even out to any of my family members. So I’m really happy that I was able to tell my story from a place of confidence.”

I’ve had this whole new wave of people in my life who care about me for me.

Brooks’ growing fame — a cover shoot for Sports Illustrated, a stint on Dancing With the Stars, and a headline-making relationship with her dance partner — made the reality show a concrete opportunity, and the sisters started filming last spring. For Sarah Jane, making the series was unlike anything she’d ever done. “The first day, I was like, ‘There’s no way I’ll forget that 30 people are in my living room.’ And then by Week 2, I had forgotten. It becomes normal, and you’re having the most serious argument with your sister or a crying conversation, and you forget that there’s a whole camera setup.”

She had no idea what to expect from the final edit, and says she was “definitely nervous” to branch into reality TV, but she’s happy with how all eight episodes came out. “I was really pleased with how my story specifically was handled, and I thought that it was a really accurate representation of each of us girls,” Nader says. “My friends from home all watched it in Louisiana, and they were like, ‘I feel like I’m in your living room.’

Her vulnerability made her a breakout star of the series — which has been renewed for a second season — and earned her love from legions of queer viewers and others who are convinced they’d be friends with her. “I’ve had this whole new wave of people in my life who care about me for me,” she says. “I can be more reserved when I’m meeting people out in the world, so when people are like, ‘I watched your show and I loved it,’ I feel like I know them instantly.”

She couldn’t have predicted this exact path, but growing up in and around Baton Rouge, Nader knew she was destined for something big. “I am the kid that saw myself in everything I watched,” she says, recalling a time she jumped out of the car at a rolling stop, pretending to be the lead in the Divergent films. “I’m still kind of like that, where I’ll watch a medical movie and I’m like, ‘Should I be a doctor? That’s a hot job.’ I’m just an imaginative person, so I did think for sure that I would be in the spotlight.”

She was in middle school when Brooks moved to New York to be a model. After visiting her, Sarah Jane knew she wanted to live there, too. “Her lifestyle was so cool, and I was like, ‘I would love to do that.’ But even more so, I was like, ‘Anything that will get me to New York, because then I’ll have so many options.’”

I don’t know why they brand me the ho of the fam. … I think my dating life is so interesting that they just want to comment on it all the time.

Nader enrolled at Fordham College at Lincoln Center to study communications, but she had to do her first semester online from Louisiana due to the pandemic. Once she finally settled in the city, she signed with Ford Models (she’s now with Freedom Models) and started building her resume through any means she could. “I did so many test shoots in Brooklyn and Long Island. I would take the train to these random people’s houses,” she says. “I met so many people just by being like ‘Who wants to shoot this week?’ and reaching out to photographers.”

Despite her familial connection in the industry, Nader took the initiative to forge her own path. “You have to believe in yourself, because no matter how good your agents are, the person who is going to get you there is you at the end of the day,” she says. Still, she credits Brooks with helping her navigate those early days. “I feel very lucky that I was guided through the whole modeling process, but I know there are so many girls moving here from another country or another state who are new to everything and get taken advantage of.”

The biggest thing she’s learned from her supermodel sister is how to treat those around her. “She has always taught me to be grateful and to never have a diva mentality because modeling can be framed as glamorous, but in reality, it’s a job. Any set you walk into, introduce yourself to every single person because everyone is spending time to be there,” Nader says. “She’ll write thank you notes to people for anything. I think having that in practice is really important.”

Nader and her sisters have their ups and downs, but what comes through is their unshakable bond. “We actually get along very well considering that we’re together every second,” Nader says. “Grace Ann and I just got into two blowup fights this week, and then I’m like, ‘OK, when are you back in New York?’ We make up so quickly. Our text chain is like, ‘Oh, you’ve turned into a real b*atch, haven't you? Enjoy your life.’ And then I’m like, ‘You want to hang out?’ We always want to be together at the end of the day.”

If it makes you comfortable to identify or not identify a certain way, do it. Just do whatever makes you feel good.

She speaks lovingly about each of them, in between jokes about how they sometimes piss her off. “Brooks is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met in my life. Mary Holland is the most pure soul. She doesn’t have an evil bone in her body. Grace Ann is brutally honest and is the friend that I will go to and be like, ‘Did I f*ck up here?’ And she’ll be like, ‘Yeah.’ She will give it to you straight.” (Two minutes later, Nader flashes a grin and quips “f*cking b*tches” about her sisters’ comments on her love life. “I don’t know why they brand me the ho of the fam. … I think my dating life is so interesting that they just want to comment on it all the time.”)

Nader’s dating experiences were inevitably going to be relevant in a show about her life, but talking about her sexuality publicly was uncharted territory. “I’m an anxious person. I don’t talk much on my social media, and the show was a huge step for me in talking about everything openly,” she says. In the series, she lets the audience in on a heart-to-heart with her mom about being queer, brings a potential love interest to Louisiana to meet her extended family, and lets her sisters crash her date at West Village gay bar Henrietta Hudson — culminating in the iconic “Pink Pony Club” dance scene in the final episode. It’s Nader’s favorite scene from Season 1 — and one her family now recreates as a way of showing love. "My parents, every wedding they go to or wherever, they play ‘Pink Pony Club’ in a bar, anywhere, in Louisiana, they send me a video of them jumping and dancing,” she says. “I’m like, ‘That is so f*cking cute.’”

If you thought we were crazy in Season 1, Season 2 is a level up. Sh*t hits the fan.

Seeing how she’s resonated with queer viewers, Nader says the nervousness was all worth it. “A few people have messaged me saying that they have experienced homophobia in their family or have not felt comfortable to come out, and then they watched the show and felt comfortable enough to come out. That is insane to me,” she says. “To be a part of anyone’s experience, I feel honored, and just honored to have a platform to be authentically myself. To see that effect makes me want to be more open about more sh*t.”

She resists labels, and urges anyone struggling with their identity to release the pressure to fit into a box. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation. It’s your life, and it affects you more than anyone. So if it makes you comfortable to identify or not identify a certain way, do it. Just do whatever makes you feel good.”

Nader teases that Season 2, set to release this year, is “very, very spicy” and will reveal lots of recent developments in her love life, as the sisters settle into their new place in L.A. “If you thought we were crazy in Season 1, Season 2 is a level up. Sh*t hits the fan. I think everyone will love it, and there's a lot more sh*t going on in our lives.”

Until then, she’s planning a joint birthday bash with Brooks and working on some “solo Sarah Jane stuff,” along with manifesting career opportunities she doesn’t want to share just yet. Her ultimate work goal is breaking into high-fashion work, despite being constantly told she should stick to commercial modeling due to her 5-foot-5 frame. Nader looks to Kate Moss for inspiration as a successful shorter woman in the industry. “She’s such an example for me because she was walking runways and doing all the dopest high-fashion stuff at her height, and with a different look than most people had at the time,” she says. “So I would love to break into that world and just be like, ‘F*ck you; I can do it.’”

In the meantime, she’s in no rush to leave this era behind. “I'm honestly so happy and content right now,” she says. With a new audience of parasocial besties and the unwavering support of her family, Nader is feeling more motivated than ever to show up exactly as she is. “The most freeing part has been being like, ‘I’m just me. Take it or leave it.’”