FigureAsia 35 Under 35 · Entertainment
Anna Cathcart
Age 22 · Actor · Canada
Young-adult title lead completing two full seasons within the assessment window
- Age at 31 December 2025
- 22
- Field
- Scripted television and streaming performance
- Country or region
- Canada
- FigureAsia U35 Assessment
- 81.9 / 100
Profile
Career and documented record
Kitty Song Covey began as the younger sister who pushed other characters into action. Anna Cathcart’s 2025 work shows how that quick, interventionist personality can carry a full series while acquiring consequences. The Canadian actor, born in Vancouver in 2003, is of Chinese and Irish descent and has described growing up where Chinese Canadian community life was familiar. She began working professionally as a child, developing through roles whose ages and concerns grew alongside her rather than forcing an abrupt transition into adult material.
Agent Olympia in Odd Squad gave Cathcart an early substantial role inside comic problem-solving. She later played Dizzy Tremaine in the Descendants films and Kitty in the To All the Boys trilogy. In those films, speed, curiosity and directness made Kitty’s expository function feel like personality. The spin-off XO, Kitty moved her to the centre and relocated much of the action to Seoul, placing a continuing lead inside an international teen ensemble.
The completed eight-episode second season was released in full on 16 January 2025. Kitty returns to school after an unsettled first semester, encounters changing romantic attachments and renews her search for information about her late mother’s history. Cathcart has to organise intersecting friendship, family and romantic plots while preserving the impulsiveness established in the films. Her performance works through pace: confidence often arrives before reflection, then gives way to embarrassment or discomfort when intervention harms another person.
The role also crosses several cultural contexts without pretending they resolve into one simple answer. Kitty is a mixed Korean American character whose connection to Korea comes through her mother, education and chosen relationships. Cathcart’s own mixed Chinese background is distinct from that character history.
Cathcart returned for a second completed title season within the same assessment window. XO, Kitty season three released on 2 April 2026 with eight episodes, carrying Kitty into senior-year decisions, renewed Korean family connections and a Covey-sister reunion. The season debuted at number one on Netflix’s English-language television list with 12.9 million views in its first week; that figure records the title’s international reach, not Cathcart’s achievement alone.
FigureAsia selection
Why Anna Cathcart is on the list
Cathcart is selected for the scale and continuity of a completed title performance. The verified release of eight second-season episodes in January 2025 and eight third-season episodes in April 2026 supports substantive 2025–2026 contribution: she carries two full instalments already in public circulation rather than an announced continuation. The verified position of Kitty as the organising character for school, romantic and maternal-family storylines supports narrative or production responsibility: Cathcart must keep a large ensemble intelligible while the title character’s choices generate consequences. The verified international setting and mixed-diaspora narrative support Asian significance and global relevance: a young Asian woman remains funny, jealous, mistaken and central across multiple cultural contexts instead of serving as a secondary marker of representation. Her strongest work is tonal.
Teen romantic comedy can depend on broad charm, but Kitty’s intrusive behaviour must remain understandable without every decision being excused. Cathcart moves quickly from confidence to embarrassment and then to repair, a pattern that supports craft or creative execution because pace becomes character rather than surface energy. The second season also supports durability and demonstrated trajectory: it develops Kitty beyond the original relocation and first set of relationships while retaining the interventionist personality established in the films. The identity boundary stays precise.
Cathcart is Chinese-Irish Canadian; Kitty is mixed Korean American. The programme cannot stand for every Korean or Chinese diaspora experience, and Cathcart is neither writer nor producer. Her qualifying case is acting: sixteen completed episodes across two seasons of title responsibility, ensemble leadership and controlled comic error. At her age, that accumulated franchise lead time is unusual enough to earn a place without reference to social reach or any future season.
Season three materially strengthens durability and impact. Cathcart again has to organise school, romance and family plots through Kitty’s decisions, while the Covey-sister reunion connects the series to its wider franchise history. The first-week number-one placing demonstrates realised international circulation for the completed season; the score continues to credit Cathcart only for the title performance that audiences encountered.
Verified work
The 2025–26 record
Completed work
Returned in the title role for the completed eight-episode second season of XO, Kitty, released on 16 January 2025, carrying school conflict, family discovery and romantic uncertainty.
Attributable execution
Anchored the returning international ensemble throughout the 2025 season as Kitty began a new semester, keeping intersecting friendship and family plots connected to one lead viewpoint.
Documented responsibility
Sustained Kitty’s comic impulsiveness across the 2025 episodes while making the discomfort and repair following her interventions visible, giving mistakes dramatic consequence.
Verified consequence
Continued the character’s search for her late mother’s Seoul history during the completed second season, linking romantic comedy to an unresolved family connection without claiming a final cultural solution.
Second completed title season in window
Returned for the eight-episode third season released on 2 April 2026, carrying Kitty’s senior-year decisions, Korean family ties and Covey-sister reunion.
Field context
The work in its field
What the performer brings is experience of playing a young Asian woman who can be romantic, jealous, funny, mistaken and narratively central. A complete second title season demonstrates durability beyond the novelty of a spin-off premise. Cathcart is not the programme’s creator or producer, but she is its emotional organiser, responsible for keeping Kitty recognisable while allowing error, repair and family discovery to complicate the character.
A second completed season is important because it tests whether a title performance can outlast the novelty of its premise. Cathcart keeps Kitty emotionally recognisable while allowing jealousy, error, family discovery and repair to complicate her; the significance is sustained Asian-diaspora narrative centrality without confusing lead acting with series authorship. Season three’s number-one debut and 12.9 million first-week views establish international consequence for the completed title, while remaining production-level evidence rather than personal credit.
FigureAsia U35 Assessment
Assessment breakdown
81.9out of 100
Substantive 2025–2026 contribution
18 / 20
Cathcart carried completed second and third seasons of XO, Kitty, maintaining the title character through changing friendships, family discoveries and romantic mistakes across sixteen released episodes.
Verified impact
12 / 15
The two released seasons gave her sustained international title responsibility; season three debuted at number one on Netflix’s English TV list with 12.9 million first-week views, a title-level reach measure.
Originality and distinction
8 / 10
She keeps Kitty's impulsiveness comic without erasing its consequences, allowing embarrassment, self-interest and care to remain present in the same performance.
Industry influence
8 / 10
Few candidates of her age carried two complete title seasons within the window, but the show’s intentionally light register and uneven critical reception constrained originality and wider influence scores.
Individual agency
8 / 10
The assessed responsibility is the person’s work as actor on XO, Kitty seasons two and three, not the production’s entire result.
Durability and demonstrated trajectory
4 / 5
Both qualifying seasons were completed and entered public circulation within the evidence window; no future instalment earns credit.
Asian significance and global relevance
3.5 / 5
Cathcart’s Chinese-Irish Canadian identity and a Korean-American title character situate the work within Asian-diaspora entertainment without treating identity itself as achievement.
Craft or creative execution
8 / 8
She keeps Kitty's impulsiveness comic without erasing its consequences, allowing embarrassment, self-interest and care to remain present in the same performance.
Performance, narrative or production responsibility
4.2 / 6
Anna Cathcart held actor responsibility on XO, Kitty seasons two and three; collective production credit was separated from individual agency.
Audience and critical consequence
4 / 5
The released season gave her sustained international title responsibility and a visible Asian diaspora setting for young audiences without relying on a future instalment.
Cross-market and format achievement
2.1 / 3
The completed work was assessed as a globally distributed series set largely in Seoul, with cross-market circulation credited at title level.
Professional practice and representation
2.1 / 3
The case records a specific Canadian actor of Chinese and Irish heritage contribution without treating identity itself as an achievement.