Danai Jekesai Gurira (; born February 14, 1978) is a Zimbabwean-American actress and playwright. She is best known for her starring roles as Michonne on the AMC horror drama series The Walking Dead (2012–2020, 2022) and as Okoye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films, including Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).
Gurira is also the playwright of the Broadway play Eclipsed, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.
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). Her parents moved from Southern Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, to the United States in 1964. She is the youngest of four siblings; Shingai and Choni are her sisters and Tare, her brother, is a chiropractor. Gurira lived in Grinnell until December 1983, when at age five she and her family moved back to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, after Robert Mugabe rose to power in 1979.
She attended high school at Dominican Convent High School. Afterward, she returned to the United States to study at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. Gurira also earned a Master of Fine Arts in acting from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Career
Early career
Gurira taught playwriting and acting in Liberia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. 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.’ ”
Theater
In May 2023 Gurira played Richard III in a Shakespeare in the Park production.
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. 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, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress. 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.
In 2009, Gurira made her acting debut on Broadway in August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone playing Martha Pentecost.
Gurira's 2012 play The Convert was 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.
In January 2015, Familiar, a play written by Gurira and directed by Rebecca Taichman, opened at Yale Repertory Theatre. 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.