Danai Gurira

Danai Gurira '04 (MFA, Graduate Acting) is an award-winning playwright and actress. As a playwright, her works include: In the Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (Tony Award Nomination: Best Play, NAACP Award; Helen Hayes Award: Best New Play; Connecticut Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Production of a Play), and The Convert (six Ovation Awards, Los Angeles Outer Critics Award). Danai’s newest play Familiar received its world premiere at Yale Rep in 2015 and premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons in February of 2016. She is a recipient of the Sam Norkin Award at the 2016 Drama Desk Awards, a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellow, and has been commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court.

Danai is currently developing a pilot for HBO. As an actor, she has appeared in the films The Visitor, Mother of George, she also played Isabella in NYSF’s Measure for Measure (Equity Callaway Award).  She currently plays Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead. (NAACP Image Award nomination) and recently wrapped production on the Tupac Shakur biopic “All Eyez on Me.” Danai next goes into production on Marvel’s “Black Panther” where she will star as Okoye. She holds an MFA from NYU Tisch. 

Born in the US to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, Danai serves as an ambassador for Bono’s ONE campaign and founder of LOGpledge.org; an awareness building campaign focused on the plights of women and girls around the globe. She is also the co-founder of Almasi Arts, which works to give access and opportunity to the African Dramatic Artist. almasiartsalliance.org

Twitter & Instagram: @danaigurira
Facebook: @DanaiGuriraOfficial