Mind's Eye

- Molly Fitzpatrick

Within a few minutes of meeting each other, Hannah Gross and I are trapped. We’re stuck on the first floor of the SoHo building where her NYLON photo shoot took place, and try as we might, the door leading back onto the street just won’t open. There’s no knob, no buzzer, no lock for a key we wouldn’t have, anyway. It’s an experience that would be mildly terrifying—not unlike the prelude to a grisly murder on Mindhunter, the chilling Netflix crime drama in which Gross co-stars—if it weren’t so funny. When all seems lost, Gross gives the door one last determined push and it swings open into the sunshine. We survive.

A few blocks away at the casual bistro Lucky Strike, Gross orders a Coke and a grilled chicken sandwich, which comes with a side of fries she’s eager to share. The 26-year-old actress wears a black tee tucked into her jeans and a pair of sensible black sandals, the perfect uniform for mid-August in Manhattan. A graduate of the Experimental Theatre Wing of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Gross moved to New York City from her native Toronto nine years ago, but she still doesn’t quite consider herself a full-on New Yorker. “I think you really have to be born here,” she says with a sly grin.