Age: 33
female
Valeria Smirnova (born 4 November 1992), known professionally as Lera Abova, is a Russian and German model and actress. She works under more than one modelling agency, including Select Model Management, Oui Management, and Fabbrica Milano Management. In the Pitch Perfect spin-off, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, she played as Thea. She is cast as Nico Robin for Netflix's adaptation of One Piece. Abova was born 4 November 1992, and grew up in the village of Slavgorod in Siberia. According to her the village is “so small they don’t have it on the map”. When she was 13, she moved to Germany. She didn't speak German, so she used an electronic translator to communicate. She struggled to connect with her schoolmates due to the language barrier and her being from a different background. She liked to wear a pink Pokémon T-shirt and had “crazy, long hair.” After learning German, she made many friends. She dropped out of school before her final exams when she was either 18 or 19. In 2016, she was noticed by David Sims who started her career as a fashion model. Soon other fashion photographers signed her, including Colin Dodgson and Mariano Vivanco, as well as Vogue stylists from many countries around the world. In the first two years of her career, she participated in many advertising campaigns. In 2017, Luc Besson cast her in the role of Maude in his film Anna, alongside Sasha Luss.
The story follows a team of pirate mercenaries known as the Lagoon Company, that smuggles goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the early to mid 1990s.[4] Their base of operations is located in the fictional harbor city of Roanapur in east Thailand near the border of Cambodia (somewhere in the Amphoe Mueang Trat district, likely on the mainland north/northeast of the Ko Chang island or on the island itself).[5] The city is home to the Japanese Yakuza, the Chinese Triad, the Russian mafia, the Colombian cartel, the Italian mafia, a wide assortment of pickpockets, thugs, mercenaries, thieves, prostitutes, assassins, and gunmen. The city also has a large Vietnamese refugee population following the Vietnamese refugees exodus after the Communist takeover of Vietnam in 1975. Lagoon Company transports goods for various clients in the American made 80-foot (24 m) Elco-type PT boat Black Lagoon. It has a particularly friendly relationship with the Russian crime syndicate Hotel Moscow. The team takes on a variety of missions—which may involve violent firefights, hand-to-hand combat, and nautical battles—in various Southeast Asian locations, even going as far as Phu Quoc island of Vietnam. When they are not working, the members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur which is often destroyed in firefights.
