Actor: Danai Gurira

Danai Gurira is a playwright first, and her play Eclipsed was the first on Broadway with an all-Black female cast and creative team.

The Walking Dead gave her Michonne across eight seasons, and Black Panther gave her Okoye, whose loyalty to the throne creates the film’s most interesting internal conflict.

She was born in the United States and raised in Zimbabwe, and her writing deals consistently with African women’s experience, which she has said the acting career funds.