Chicago P.D. Star Nicole Ari Parker Shares Swimsuit Photo “Forever Your Ride and Live”

1. Hotel Workouts

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Parker loves weight lifting and cardio sessions on the treadmill when she’s at home. She also has a routine figured out for when she’s on the road. “I’m always in hotels and I have this workout that I do in my PJs,” she says. “I get out of bed, lay on floor and do a circuit of five exercises: squats, lunges, push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks. I do it four times and I’m done. Think about it this way: It’s easy to do this wherever you are and I promise you will start your day energized if you do this. We actually launched an app last week called KOFIT that has my exact workout."

2. 20 Minute Workouts

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Parker worked hard to make her workout app accessible for everyone. “We were really trying to figure out a way to not focus so much on weight loss, but healthy habits,” she says. “The way you shower, brush your teeth and put on your clothes, you can also fit in five minutes of fitness. So we have five-minute workouts that you can do twice to turn them into 10-minute workouts. We also have 20-minute workouts.”

3. Losing 20 Pounds

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Parker lost 20 pounds by making small changes that would be consistent, over intense punishing diets. “I did it by calming down and doing a little bit every day,” she says. “Instead of cramming a 20-pound weight loss into a 30-day juice fast, I realized that if I eat right and dedicate 15 minutes of every day to my workout the weeks go by and the weight falls off.”

4. Sunscreen and Skincare

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Parker is diligent about protecting her skin from the sun. “As a Black woman, I have just started learning that I need to wear sunscreen, too,” she says. “I like spray-on sunscreens because I wear a lot of makeup. I’m also really into moisturizing. It’s always the legs, arms, and hands that get all the moisturizer, so I like to really take my time and apply to my whole body. And I like to cleanse with the NaturesBeautibar [soaps] — it’s a woman-owned company, and the products are all natural and just divine.”

5. Gratitude Journal

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Parker and her husband keep a gratitude journal every day. “We wake up early and write down our dreams and thoughts,” she says. “It’s kind of weird. My husband is this giant guy and he’s writing in a composition notebook that I bought at a drugstore. He can’t sit in a lotus position due to sports injury, but we’ll sit outside in the sunshine and write down all that we’re grateful for. It changes things. Focusing on the good makes all the difference.”

1. Joining the Cast

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Kang was incredibly nervous when she joined the cast of You. “I was in the show, You, and that was a huge shift for me,” she says. “It’s my same producer and even the same director for some episodes at Batwoman, Marcos Siega, who have seen me grow up. I remember I had never really been on a set before; I had been an extra and did some student films, a ton of theater but that was the first time that I had been on a set of that scale before. I remember I was in hair and makeup and felt like the most pampered and fabulous person (laughs). I was walking around in my own music video. They told me we are going to be filming episode two and I had only received episode one, so as a theater or as any actor, I always thought my first time I was going to be so prepared and so ready but here I was sitting in a full panic in hair. I just told myself to breathe.”

2. Batwoman Role

Kang is proud of her Batwoman role (as Mary Hamilton) and hopes there will be many more like it. “Don’t we just love strong female characters and female empowerment?” she says. “I think that’s what our show arguably does best. I think, you know, if you look at our top cast, it’s overwhelmingly women, and that doesn’t happen. And we aren’t talking about men; we aren’t needing men to tell the audience about ourselves. That is my favorite thing. That is also one of my favorite things about Mary. She is unapologetically herself in the way she dresses, in the way she comes into a room, in the way she takes on risk.”

3. New York Roots

Kang has a soft spot in her heart for New York. “I always say New York was my coming of age story, it was my cultural awakening. In that way, I owe it so much,” she says. “All of the hard lessons and the big triumphs for me, at the beginning of my career, all happened in New York City, which is like the prologue of a book. The move to LA was for work since I am in Vancouver shooting Batwoman. I thought it would be great to have my US-base be in LA since I am here for ten months out of the year.”

4. She’s an Empath

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Kang goes out of her way to be kind to newcomers. “I am such an empath; when we have guest stars, I can feel their energy,” she says. “I like to say, you are doing incredible. If we have time and a lot of scenes together I definitely make an effort to rehearse with them. My favorite part is when you feel the trust and you can feel entitled in a good way to the space and the scene. Maybe you can try something or something comes about that you didn’t anticipate— it’s like lightning in a bottle—that’s what we are trying to capture.”

5. Championing Diversity

Kang is proud of her Korean heritage, and representing it on screen. “Diversity, it’s this beautiful thing,” she says. “It’s this beautiful palette, because, listen, we tell incredible stories, but the people in Gotham, I think that’s a really, really great, exciting thing about it; it goes along with the tempo and the themes of our show in the first place. If we’re going to make another show in Gotham in 2019, 2020, then what are we going to say this time that hasn’t already been said before? The thing is, is that Gotham is made up of a bunch of people, a bunch of different people who have tons of different layered experiences.”

Actress Lauren Holly is showing support for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA members via her social media posts. Holly, 59, shared a picture of herself posing on a boat in a black swimsuit and hat with the words “Make Residuals Great Again” written on it. “Summer ends but solidarity continues… Handmade hats by human @claytonfarris - proceeds go to @alifeinthearts to support #wga and #sagaftra,” she captioned the post. Here’s what her health and fitness routine looks like.

1. Workout Schedule

Holly’s workout schedule varies between yoga and cardio. “I’m a high-energy person, I don’t like to sit still that much,” she says. “I keep a fairly consistent workout schedule. In a good week I take two Bikram yoga classes and have two days to run. I also do sit-ups, push-ups, and maybe trampoline for fun.

2. Dance Training

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Holly had to learn to dance for her role in Tiny Pretty Things. “Dancing is so much harder than people would think—I can’t stress it enough,” she says. “I always considered myself an athlete, so going into this I thought I would be able to figure it out, but I came nowhere close! The training these dancers go through to simply make themselves look graceful is an incredible thing. For my role, I worked with our main choreographer Jennifer Nichols to perfect my walk, my posture and more. It’s interesting because she would videotape me through the whole process and it was cool to see the changes. It’s not like I was learning big, dramatic movements, but I had to do the finer things like learn to walk and move like a dancer.”

3. Food Philosophy

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Holly’s dance training gave her a new perspective on beauty. “Being healthy is how dancers avoid injury,” she says. “They take care of themselves, they eat really well and they treat food as fuel. What we put into our bodies and how we treat our bodies is so important. Eating right, staying hydrated and moving your body every day is essential for self-care. I don’t follow a specific diet because whenever I’ve tried them, I always cheat. It’s too much pressure. One thing that I try to do is I try to eat things that don’t come out of boxes, bags or cans. Fresh food is the best.”

4. Toronto Life

Holly loves living in Toronto. "To be honest, I was living in Los Angeles and I was on NCIS, and I did not want to raise the boys in L.A. I picked Toronto kind of by a fluke, because I grew up in upstate New York about two hours away,” she says. “I have family there, and I thought, okay, it's close to my family and it's a city where lots happens."

5. Skincare Routine

Holly felt spoiled on set when it came to skincare pampering. “On set, we had such a great hair and makeup team,” she says. “At the end of the day, when we would take off all of our makeup, they would prepare hot towels and my makeup artist had all these wonderful concoctions, like oils and creams, to lather on my face for my ride home. It was a total pamper session! I’m also huge on keeping my face clean. I don’t think there’s ever been a night I had gone to bed with my makeup on, even when I was young and out drinking. My mother used to drill that into me, too. Keeping your skin super hydrated and clean is what you need to do.”