Tony Soprano’s Fear and Loathing–style swing through Vegas on last night’s episode introduced America to the character of Sonya Aragon, representing what’s sure to become a new male-fantasy archetype: the gorgeous stripper with a heart of gold and a mound of peyote. (Of course, Sonya is stripping her way through college — which Chris Rock has dismissed as “the stripper myth”!) The character left men (and not a few women) with one question in their minds: Who was that girl? It’s Sarah Shahi, a 27-year-old former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader (some cheerleader pics here). Shahi’s birth name was Aahoo Jahansouzshahi; her great-grandfather was Fat'h Ali Shah Qajar, nineteenth-century king of Persia. She’s recurred on Alias and Dawson’s Creek and was one of the girls with Will Ferrell’s wife when he’s caught doing a naked run in Old School. Her new fans will be happiest to hear that she did a two-season arc on lady-lovefest The L Word, playing the sweet-natured D.J. girlfriend of Katherine Moennig’s Shane, who’s left at the altar in the third-season finale. See her next on Life, a just-announced NBC cop drama airing Wednesdays at ten this fall. —Ben Wasserstein

Related: The Hot Chick Tony Soprano Was Banging [Kill Brain Cells]

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