Vanessa 'Van' Keefer

Van is Earn's ex and the mother of his daughter, Lottie, holding down a teaching job and a household while he chases a career that keeps him broke and absent. She's sharp, self-possessed, and unwilling to be anyone's afterthought, even as she still lets him back into her orbit.

Atlanta could have flattened her into 'baby mama,' but the writing keeps giving Van her own nights out, her own anxieties about respectability and money, her own strange detours. Zazie Beetz plays her with a dry, watchful humor that never begs for sympathy, which is exactly what makes you give it to her.