Danai Gurira

Danai Gurira (born February 14, 1978, Grinnell, Iowa, U.S.) is a Zimbabwean American stage and screen actress and playwright. Although Gurira is perhaps best known for her roles in the television series The Walking Dead and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Black Panther movies, she is also an award-winning playwright whose works include In the Continuum (2005), Eclipsed (2009), The Convert (2011), and Familiar (2015).

Early life and education

Danai Jekesai Gurira was born the youngest of four children on February 14, 1978, and her name fittingly means “to be in love” or “to love one another” in Shona. Her parents had moved to the United States in the 1960s from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the country’s struggle for independence from Great Britain. Gurira’s father, Roger, taught chemistry at Grinnell College in Iowa, and her mother, Josephine, was a librarian at the college.

A few years after Zimbabwe won independence in 1980, Gurira and her family moved back, settling in Harare. She returned to the United States to attend school at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2001. While studying abroad in Capetown, South Africa, Gurira began to think about pursuing a more artistic career. She entered New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study acting and earned a master’s degree in 2004.

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In the Continuum

While at New York University, Gurira wrote the play In the Continuum with fellow student Nikkole Salter. The work features two Black women, one in the United States and the other in Zimbabwe, who have contracted HIV from their partners. It premiered in 2005 Off-Broadway, in New York City, starring Gurira and Salter, both of whom won an Obie Award for special citations; Gurira won the Helen Hayes Award for lead actress in a non-resident production, meaning a play originally produced for a theater outside Washington, D.C.

Eclipsed and first role on Broadway

In 2009 Gurira appeared in her first Broadway role, in August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, while her second play, Eclipsed, debuted at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington, D.C. Taking place in 2003 during Liberia’s civil war, the play follows four women who are held captive by rebels. Eclipsed reached Broadway in 2016, starring Lupita Nyong’o, and that year it was nominated for several Tony Awards, including best play and best actress. It also made history as the first Broadway production written, directed, and performed entirely by Black women.

The Convert, Familiar, and lead in Richard III

Gurira’s third play, The Convert, explores the effects of British colonialism in Southern Africa. It premiered at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in 2012. Set in the 1890s, the play follows Jekesai, a girl who converts to Christianity—and must give up all her traditional African beliefs—to escape an arranged marriage. Gurira’s fourth play, Familiar, was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, and debuted there in 2015. The comedy-drama investigates family and cultural identity by telling the story of a first-generation Zimbabwean American woman who is preparing to marry a white American. In 2022 Gurira returned to the stage, playing the title character in William Shakespeare’s Richard III at the annual Shakespeare in the Park festival in New York’s Central Park.

Early screen roles and The Walking Dead

During her rise as a playwright, Gurira played various bit parts on television shows, including Law & Order and Life on Mars. Her first movies include the drama The Visitor (2007), the horror film My Soul to Take (2010), and the drama Restless City (2011). In 2010 and 2011 she had a recurring role on the television series Treme, which follows residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. In 2012 Gurira joined the cast of The Walking Dead, the popular television series about a zombie apocalypse, which premiered in 2010. Gurira’s portrayal of the sword-wielding character Michonne helped to catapult her to stardom. She remained with the show until 2020, by which time her character had grown from a wary loner to a just and fair leader. In 2022 Gurira announced that she would reprise her role in a Walking Dead spin-off alongside Andrew Lincoln. That same year she also appeared in the series’ final episode.

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Black Panther

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Meanwhile, Gurira continued to act in movies. She starred in the drama Mother of George (2013) and in a biography of rapper Tupac Shakur titled All Eyez on Me (2017). In 2018 Gurira was cast in the Marvel Comics movie Black Panther, playing Okoye, a martial arts expert and leader of the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther’s guard of women warriors. The blockbuster made news as the first big-budget movie with an almost all-Black cast, and both reviewers and audiences praised the film. The actors received a Screen Actors Guild Award (2019) for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture. Gurira went on to reprise the role of Okoye in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).

Activism

Gurira is a cofounder of Almasi Collaborative Arts, a community that helps to educate and train dramatic arts students in Zimbabwe through collaboration with American arts institutions, and the founder of Love Our Girls (LOG), an organization dedicated to bringing awareness to the injustices faced by women and girls around the world. In 2018 she was named a goodwill ambassador for UN Women, a division of the United Nations that supports member states in designing and executing policies and services to benefit women and girls.