She’s just 8 but her acting career is promising

In 2016, 4-year-old Ramona Williams of Joliet walked through the door of The Herald-News and introduced herself, saying, “I’m Princess Ramona. I skate and do ballet. I have a sash and crown. It sparkles.”

At the time, Ramona was modeling, competing in pageants, taking ballet and ice skating classes and serving as a brand ambassador for a Chicago rap artist. She earned at least 10 titles in three years.

Today Ramona simply introduces herself by name - even though she has appeared in three episodes of “Chicago P.D.” as a recurring character and in the title role in “Saint Frances” which received a 99% score from the review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes.

“Saint Frances” is a film about a 34-year-old woman trying to get her life together and the friendship she develops with the 6-year-old girl she is nannying.

Ramona is still ice skating (although she had to let the ballet go for lack of time) and is looking forward to more acting roles.

Oh, and her goal is to ice skate in the Olympics one day as part of TeamUSA.

Needless to say, Ramona is brimming with confidence, more than one might expect in an 8-year-old, but it’s an offhand confidence in her abilities and the hard work needed to achieve them. Ramona also relies on her family’s motto.

“Team Williams never gives up,” Ramona said.

But Ramona is also still a little girl and happy to talk about topics that interest kids – like loose baby teeth and getting her adult teeth.

“I’ve lost a lot of teeth,” Ramona said, just as casually. “They just keep coming out.”

Still, Ramona doesn’t think confidence at her age is a big deal.

“I’m just naturally confident,” she said. “I’m just calm and, no matter what, I’m confident about everything.”

Ramona said she never had trouble learning her lines. She simply practiced with her mother and she practiced with the cast.

“Sometimes we practiced with the paper and then, once I memorized them, I’d take the piece of paper away and practice without them,” Ramona said.

In the 2016 story, Ramona’s father Clarence Williams said that confidence was one reason why he and Lucia Williams, Ramona’s mother, chose the activities they did for her.

“She was very outgoing and very talkative,” Clarence Williams said in the story. “She basically liked being around people and in front of people talking to people; she was never shy. We thought it would be good to corral that energy.”

Lucia said as acting opportunities arose for Ramona, Lucia simply presented acting as role-playing, which Ramona loves to do with her brother Noah, 8.

“Pretending to be someone else is easy for me because I do it all the time with my brother,” Ramona said. “Sometimes we pretend we live faraway, not in Joliet Maybe, in my imagination, China. Or India.”

In “Chicago P.D.,” Ramona plays Makayla Ward, the guardian of the fictional officer Kimberly Burgess. Makayla was orphaned after most of her family was murdered.

But even that role is no challenge for Ramona.

“Makayla doesn’t trust anybody because of how her family got killed,” Ramona said. “Pretending to be scared is easy. I can shake and make myself look like I have been traumatized.”

Ramona said she’s never actually been traumatized. But she was really sad when COVID mitigations shut down ice skating rinks, since Ramona was on the ice nearly every day of the week, Lucia said.

But Ramona is taking lessons once again and has even caught up to the skating goals she had set last year, before most people had ever heard of COVID-19.

And despite the pandemic, Ramona is still setting goals. For one, she want to increase her flexibility so she can keep achieving new skating heights. And she’d really like to master the Biellmann spin by the end of the year.

“That’s a position in skating where you’re spinning and your leg is lifted up behind you,” Ramona said. “It’s just beautiful.”

The other goal is more practical, at least from the vantage of family harmony.

“Try not to argue with my brother,” Ramona said.