Danielle Brooks

Brooks was born in Augusta, Georgia,[1] and grew up in South Carolina,[2] in a Christian family; her father was a deacon, and her mother, a minister.[3] She began acting at the age of six in a nativity play put on by her church.[4] For her final two years of high school, she attended South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities, a selective arts high school.[3] She studied drama at the Juilliard School and graduated in 2011.[5]

After graduating from Juilliard, Brooks won roles in two theater productions: the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Servant of Two Masters, and Blacken the Bubble. She left both productions in 2013 to join the cast of the Netflix-produced television series Orange Is the New Black, a show about a women's prison, based on Piper Kerman's memoir of the same name. Brooks played as Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson.[5] Her character originally was intended to be featured in the show for only two episodes, but was written into the rest of the first season and subsequent seasons.[5] Taystee's onscreen best friend Poussey is played by Samira Wiley, with whom Brooks has been friends since they met while studying together at Juilliard.[6] Brooks' performance on the show has been favorably reviewed by TV critics,[7] with one writer calling her "the breakout actress of the show and one of the most refreshing and exciting new talents of 2013."[3] Brooks was upgraded from a recurring cast member to a series regular for the show's second season.[8] She competed against co-star Uzo Aduba in an episode of Spike's Lip Sync Battle that aired on June 28, 2017. Brooks won with performances of Ciara's "1, 2 Step" and Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer".[9]

In September 2013, Brooks was cast in a third season episode of the HBO series Girls, becoming the first African-American actress on the show.[8]

Brooks made her Broadway debut in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple as Sofia.[1][10] The musical opened on December 10, 2015, at the Bernard B. Jacobs. Brooks received good notices for her performance, and received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.[11] In June 2019, she played Beatrice in The Public Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing, receiving a Drama League Award nomination for her performance.[12][13]

In 2022, Brooks co-starred in James Gunn's Peacemaker television series alongside actor John Cena, playing the role of Leota Adebayo. The series is spin-off of Gunn's 2021 film The Suicide Squad, and is the first television series to be included in the DCEU. In an 2022 interview, Brooks revealed that Gunn was a big fan of the Netflix hit show Orange is the New Black, and wrote the part of Adebayo with her in mind.[14]

It has also been announced that Brooks would star in a Broadway revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson starting on September 19, 2022[15] alongside Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington and directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson. It is also planned that this cast will then star in a film adaptation of the play, with a director still to be named.[16] She will also appear in The Color Purple, a feature adaptation of the musical of the same name, directed by Blitz Bazawule.[17]

On July 2, 2019, Brooks announced that she was pregnant with her first child.[18] In November, she gave birth to a girl.[19]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Danielle Brooks.

• Danielle Brooks at IMDb