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Danai Gurira
Zimbabwean-American actress (born 1978) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Danai Jekesai Gurira (/dəˈnaɪ ɡʊˈrɪərə/; born February 14, 1978) is a Zimbabwean-American actress, playwright, producer and activist. She is known for her starring roles as Michonne in the AMC horror drama franchise The Walking Dead and Okoye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Her films have grossed $6.98 billion dollars, making her the seventh highest-grossing actress of all time.[1][2]
As a playwright, she has won an Obie Award[3] and, among other works, wrote the Broadway play Eclipsed, which was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.[4] For Eclipsed, she also received a Helen Hayes Award,[5] a Drama Desk Award,[6] and an NAACP Theatre Award,[7] and was nominated for a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.[8] In 2023, she was honored with the TIME100 Impact Award.[9]
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Early life and education
Gurira was born on February 14, 1978, in Grinnell, Iowa, to Josephine Gurira, a college librarian, and Roger Gurira, a tenured professor in the Department of Chemistry at Grinnell College (both parents later joined the staff of University of Wisconsin–Platteville).[10][11][12] Her parents moved from Southern Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, to the United States in 1964.[13] She is the youngest of four siblings; Shingai and Choni are her sisters and Tare, her brother.[11] Gurira lived in Grinnell until December 1983, when at age five she and her family moved back to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe,[14] after Robert Mugabe rose to power in 1980.[15]
She attended high school at Dominican Convent High School. At 18, she returned to the United States to study at Macalester College[12] in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology.[13] Gurira also earned a Master of Fine Arts in acting from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[16][17]
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Career
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Early career
Gurira taught playwriting and acting in Liberia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.[11] One of her earliest notable performances occurred in 2001, as a senior at Macalester College. Gurira performed in a production of the Ntozake Shange play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, directed and choreographed by Dale Ricardo Shields. "She was a very intelligent, strong and independent young lady," said Shields. "She approached her studies, her classes, with a lot of focus, and you can see the same things in her performance in Black Panther."[18]
Theater and playwriting
Gurira said that she began writing plays in an effort to better utilize her strengths as an actress, and to tell stories that convey ideas about strong women with whom she identifies.[13]
"Born into this world as an African girl, I never understood the absence of voices and people who were similar to me, it never made sense to me that I couldn't see that representation. The very massive magnitude of content you get in television and film, and yet there was this almost absolute absence of the stories of women from the continent and of the continent. [...] I didn't accept any ideas as to why it wasn't there. It just needed to be there. It just has to happen, and I guess I'll have to do it."[19]
As a playwright, she has been commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court.
Gurira co-wrote and co-starred in In the Continuum, first at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and later Off-Broadway, which won her an Obie Award,[20][21] an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress.[16] In December 2011, In the Continuum commemorated World AIDS Day 2011. Sponsored by the United States Embassy in Zimbabwe, the play was performed at Harare's Theatre and featured the story of two women who were navigating the world after contracting HIV.[22]
In 2009, Gurira made her Broadway acting debut in August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone playing Martha Pentecost.[23]
Gurira's 2012 play The Convert premiered as a co-production between the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey. Later that year, Gurira received the Whiting Award for an emerging playwright[24] and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing in 2013.
In January 2015, Familiar, a play written by Gurira and directed by Rebecca Taichman, opened at Yale Repertory Theatre.[25] It later premiered Off-Broadway in New York at Playwrights Horizons. The play is about family, cultural identity, and the experience of life as a first-generation American, and Gurira has said that it was inspired in part by her family and friends.[26]
In May 2023 Gurira played Richard III in a Shakespeare in the Park production for which she received a nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Play for the 2022 Audelco Awards.[27]
Eclipsed
In 2015, Lupita Nyong'o starred in Gurira's play, Eclipsed (2009), Off-Broadway at The Public Theater.[28] It was announced that the play would move to Broadway in 2016 at the John Golden Theatre.[29][30][31] It was the first play to premiere on Broadway with an all female and black cast and creative team. The play is set in war-torn Liberia and focuses on three women who are living as sex slaves to a rebel commander, as well as one of his former wives, and a relief worker, and follows and how they deal with this difficult situation.[32] It starred Nyong'o, Akosua Busia, Saycon Sengbloh, Zainab Jah, and Pascale Armand and was directed by Liesl Tommy.[33] The inspiration for Gurira's play was a photo of Colonel Black Diamond, a female freedom fighter from Liberia, in an article in The New York Times. "Just to see these women standing there, you know, in their jeans and ... fashionable tops and their hair is all done, and they're all carrying AK-47s, was just an image I couldn't get out of my head." The image prompted curiosity about Liberia's fourteen-year civil wars, as well as a research trip to Liberia in 2007. Gurira interviewed more than 30 women who had been raped, among whose daughters that had been taken by rebel fighters and turned into sex slaves. She also spoke to female peace activists who were instrumental in ending the violence. The names of the women in Eclipsed come from the people Gurira met during her travels, whereas the fifth character is unnamed.[34]
She received the 2016 Sam Norkin Award, for Eclipsed and Familiar, presented by the Drama Desk Awards, which said, in part: "Danai Gurira demonstrates great insight, range and depth, bringing a fresh new voice to American theater."[35] Eclipsed received six nominations for the Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Play, and won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Play.
[36] Both plays received a score of 88 on Show Score which indicate "Excellent" on the platform, For Eclipsed from 570 reviews and Familiar with 119 reviews.[37][38]
Film and television
Gurira starred in the drama film The Visitor in 2007, for which she won Method Fest Independent Film Festival Award for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the 2008 film Ghost Town, the 2010 films 3 Backyards and My Soul to Take, and Restless City in 2011, as well as the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Life on Mars, and Law & Order. From 2010 to 2011, she appeared in the HBO drama series Treme.
In 2013, Gurira played a lead role in director Andrew Dosunmu's independent drama film Mother of George, which premiered at 2013 Sundance Film Festival.[13] Gurira received critical acclaim for her performance as a Nigerian woman struggling to live in the United States.[39][40] In June 2013, Gurira won the Jean-Claude Gahd Dam award at the 2013 Guys Choice Awards.[41]
Gurira played rapper Tupac Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur, in All Eyez on Me, a 2017 biopic about the rap star.[42] For this movie she received a NAACP Image awards nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture.[43]
In 2020, she signed a deal with ABC Studios.[44]
Before the 2020 pandemic, a limited series adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah was being produced for HBO MAX with Danai writing the pilot and serving as showrunner and Lupita Nyong'o as the lead actress.[45] However, production delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced Nyong'o to drop out of the series over scheduling conflicts, which ultimately led to HBO Max's decision to drop the project.[46][47]
The Walking Dead
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In March 2012, AMC announced on a live broadcast that Gurira would join the cast of their horror-drama series The Walking Dead, the highest rated series in cable television history,[48] in its third season.[49][50][51] Gurira plays the iconic character Michonne, a relentless and strong katana-wielding woman with a mysterious past and steely resolve, who becomes part of the close-knit group in a zombie apocalypse world and gradually reveals deeply compassionate and intelligent traits.[50][52] Gurira had to learn how to ride horses for the series, which she enjoyed because it was a physical challenge.[53] Rolling Stone ranked Michonne first in their list of the 30 Best The Walking Dead Characters, describing Gurira's performance as extraordinary.[54] In March 2025, Ranker ranked Michonne 9th in the top 10 list of Greatest Female TV characters of all time.[55]
In February 2019, reports emerged that Gurira would be exiting the show once she had filmed her last episodes during the tenth season.[56] Gurira's final episode, "What We Become" aired in March 2020. By the time of her departure, she was second-billed in the opening credits and had appeared in 96 episodes of the show.
In July 2022, it was announced by Scott M. Gimple, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira at San Diego Comic-Con a spin-off mini-series centered around the couple Michonne and Rick Grimes, with Lincoln and Gurira reprising their roles from the original television series.[57] The limited series, titled The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, premiered in February 2024 and consisted of six episodes.[58] She co-created it, produced it and wrote the fourth episode, titled "What We".[59] That episode received positive reviews from critics[60][61][62] and got her a nomination for the 2024 Black Reel Television award for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series.[63] The episode was also submitted for the 2024 Emmys and was listed on Variety's Emmy Prediction Top 15 list at number 10 in the writing category.[64] The series was well-received by both critics and audiences, "Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln's phenomenal performances feel like The Walking Dead at its best."[65]
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Danai was cast to star in Marvel's film Black Panther, which was released in February 2018. She played the loyal and highly skilled General Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje; an elite all-female special forces unit protectors of Wakanda and its king, the Black Panther. She received critical acclaim for her performance,[66] a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, a People's Choice Awards for The Action Movie Star of 2018, a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and a NAACP Image award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
Gurira reprised the role of Okoye in the movies Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) and in the sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). She was set to star in a spinoff series on Disney+,[67] but plans for the show were ultimately scrapped.[68]
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Activism and philanthropy
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Danai is an advocate for women, the end of poverty, and for HIV/AIDS awareness.[69][70]
In 2008, Gurira appeared at the Global Green Sustainable Design Awards to read a letter written by a New Orleans native displaced by Hurricane Katrina.[71]
In 2011, Gurira co-founded Almasi Arts, an organization dedicated to continuing arts education in Zimbabwe.[12][72][73] Gurira currently serves as the Executive Artistic Director.[74]
In 2015, Gurira signed an open letter begun by the ONE Campaign. The letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa respectively.[75] The following year, Gurira founded the non-profit organization Love Our Girls, which aims to highlight the issues and challenges that specifically affect women throughout the world.[76][77] In 2016, Gurira partnered with Johnson & Johnson in the fight against HIV/AIDS.[78]
On December 2, 2018, Gurira was announced as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the Global Citizen Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, Gurira dedicates her support to putting a spotlight on gender equality and women's rights, as well as bringing unheard women's voices front and center.[79]
Danai has been a Global Citizen ambassador since 2016, partnering with the organization on several campaigns and Global Citizen Festivals, including hosting the event in Ghana in 2022.[80]
Personal life
Gurira is a Christian[11] and lives in Los Angeles, though she regularly spends time in New York City and owns an apartment there.[81][82]
Filmography
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Film
Television
Theatre
Video games
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Works or publications
- Gurira, Danai. Running Head: The Neglect of Black Women in Psychology. 2001. Honors paper, Macalester College
- Gurira, Danai, and Nikkole Salter. In the continuum. New York, NY: Samuel French, 2008. ISBN 978-0-573-65089-5
- Gurira, Danai. Eclipsed. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2010. ISBN 978-0-822-22446-4
- Gurira, Danai. The Convert. Washington, DC : Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 2013.
- Gurira, Danai. Familiar. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Billy Rose Theatre Division, 2016.
- Gurira, Danai. Power of women : Lupita Nyong'o. New York: DKC / O&M, 2016.
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Awards and nominations
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References
External links
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