Danai Gurira

Danai Gurira (birthname: Danai Jekesai Gurira) is best known in the movies for her recurring role as Okoye in the Black Panther saga from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before she gained fame in movies and on TV with her eight-year-long role as Michonne in AMC’s long-running series, The Walking Dead (2012-2020), Gurira became a playwright of considerable acclaim, with play commissions from the Royal Court in London, Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, and Playwrights Horizon in New York.

Gurira has won several prestigious theater awards, including an Obie, a Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress (for her play, In Continuum), a Sam Norkin Award from the Drama Desk Awards, and a Tony Award nomination for Best Play for the Broadway production of her 2009 play, Eclipsed, starring Lupita Nyong’o.

At the same time, Gurira was quietly building up quality film credits, such as her big-screen debut in writer-director Tom McCarthy’s drama, The Visitor (2007), with Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass, followed by a casting in writer-director and horror master Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take (2010), with Max Theriot, Raul Esparza, and Shareeka Epps.

After a supporting role in writer-director David Koepp’s ghost-themed comedy, Ghost Town (2008), starring Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, Greg Kinnear, and Kristin Wiig, Gurira had additional supporting roles in writer-director Eric Mendelsohn’s 3 Backyards (2010), winning the Best Director prize at the Sundance Film Festival with Embeth Davidtz; two Sundance premiere films directed by Andrew Dosunmu– Restless City (2011) and the Nigerian-produced Mother of George (2013), starring Isaac de Bankolé; and portraying Tupac Shakur’s mother in the poorly received Tupac biopic, All Eyez on Me (2017), with Demetrius Shipp Jr. and Hill Harper.

In 2018, Danai Gurira’s profile took a sudden leap, with her casting as Okoye in two Marvel Cinematic Universe franchises— which finally, many critics noted, included new Black superheroes—Black Panther (2018), starring the late Chadwick Boseman,  and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), both directed by Ryan Coogler and featuring Lupita Nyong’o, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, and Angela Bassett; and the two most successful of all Avengers movies to date: Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), both starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Josh Brolin. Up to but not including 2022, these MCU movies with Gurira grossed a total of over $6.15 billion.