1. 44 J14.com
The Faking It star immigrated
to the U.S. at age 6, but
her struggles weren’t over.
R
ita Volk can still remember the pit she felt in
her stomach when she heard her parents utter
the words, “We’re moving to America.” It’s not
that Rita didn’t understand why — even at 6, she
knew that her hometown of Tashkent, Uzbekistan,
was undergoing a major change that made it
difficult to thrive ­— but the thought of leaving
everything behind to start all over on the other side
of the world seemed too much to handle. How
would she learn the language? Would she make
new friends? “I was 6 years old when my family
came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan,” Rita opens up
only to J-14. “The Soviet Union had collapsed and
then there were all these little parts that were part
of Russia that became unstable, so we had to get
out! At that time, everyone moved. Some went to
Israel and others went to
the United States.
We had
relatives in
California,
so we
moved
to San
Francisco.”
“Ihonestly
don’tknow
whatwould
havehappened
ifwestayedin
Uzbekistan.”
—Rita
“my
wason
RitaVolk’s
parentsrisked
italltogiveher
abetterlife:
◀ Kid
at heart
When the last
school bell rang
each day, Rita
would always
rush home to
watch MTV. “I
was a really big
TRL fan growing
up — I’d go
home every day
and watch it,”
she tells J-14.
HowRitamadeherdreamscometrue!
▼ Fashion throwback
Rita says she was a bit of a tomboy
growing up. “I had this Daffy Duck
boy sweater that I’d wear, and I
would wear these baseball caps,”
she confesses to J-14 exclusively.
▲ Pop culture fan
“There was so much about America
that my parents didn’t know when
we came over here,” Rita admits.
“Everything that I wound up know-
ing was kind of pop culture stuff.”

2. 45J-14
“Wehadtostartover”
The move posed so many questions,
among them, how would Rita’s
parents find work and pay the bills?
“I remember that the jobs that they
had [in Uzbekistan] before we first
came here didn’t really count, so
they basically had to start over,” Rita
recalls. In those early years, money
was hard to come by for the Volk
family. “Growing up, my family was
on welfare for a while and my parents
were never able to have the careers
that they wanted,” Rita says. “In-
stead, they kind of went from job to
job to support us.”
“Peoplemade
funofme”
Once school started
up, things only got
worse for Rita. “I was
just looked at as a
weird kid,” she con-
fesses. “I used to fake
English when I was younger and
because it took me a while to [learn],
people made fun of me. I remember
being in the 4th grade and having
temper tantrums because I felt like
people weren’t able to understand
me. I was like this little tomboy who
couldn’t speak English.” There were
moments when Rita felt helpless, but
she had her family to comfort her
— and a family tradition actually
helped her learn the language.
“We’d have movie nights and watch
big blockbusters,” Rita reveals.
“Watching movies is how I picked up
English.” In addition to improving
family
n welfare”
▲ Real life vs. TV life
Was Rita’s high school anything like the one
on Faking It? Nope. “My experience wasn’t
anything like Hester High,” she opens up. “It
was very academic and wasn’t as cool.”
Miss
Smartie
If you weren’t
seeing Rita on
TV, you might be
bumping into her
at a hospital. “I
was a psych and
pre-med major
at Duke,” Rita
says. “If I wasn’t
acting, I’d be a
surgeon —
cutting people
open.”
her speech, the
glamour of Hollywood also healed
Rita’s bruised spirit. “[I learned] that
we can be anything we want to be,”
she opens up.
As her confidence gradually started
to increase, school became easier to
navigate, and it wasn’t long before Rita
was coming home with straight As.
In fact, she even attended one of
America’s most prestigious colleges,
Duke University! There, Rita studied
hard and also explored her love for
performing by joining Joke, Duke’s
sketch comedy troupe. That led to
small roles on TV and eventually her big
audition for Faking It, and the rest is
history. “I’m forever in debt to my
parents and I’m so grateful that they
got us out of Uzbekistan,” she tells only
J-14. “I feel very lucky to be here, in the
U.S., and doing what I love. I mean, it’s
a totally different life that I’m able to live
now. Everything turned out the way it
was supposed to!”
▲ Majorrolereversal
“I originally auditioned for Karma on the show, which
I can’t even see myself playing now,” Rita tells only
J-14. Wow, we can’t imagine her not playing Amy
— she brings so much heart and charm to her!
“MTV is such a huge
cultural world, so to
be a part of it now is
not normal,” Rita
says. “It’s just
incredible!”
“My parents had no idea about
American culture so they would dress
me up for school in little boys’ clothes
and hand-me-downs,” Rita tells J-14.
PHOTOS:MAIN:WESKLAIN;FAKINGIT:COURTESYOFMTV;INSET:COURTESYOFRITAVOLK;SIDEBAR:COURTESYOFRITAVOLK(5);COURTESYOFMTV