Danielle Brooks

Danielle Brittany Brooks (born September 17, 1989) is an American actress.

She studied drama at the Juilliard School and graduated in 2011.

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 is best known for her role as prison inmate Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson on the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019).

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.

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.

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.

Brooks' performance on the show has been favorably reviewed by TV critics, with one writer calling her "the breakout actress of the show and one of the most refreshing and exciting new talents of 2013."

Brooks was upgraded from a recurring cast member to a series regular for the show's second season.

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.

After appearing in the HBO series Girls (2014), Netflix's Master of None (2015–2017), and the animated sitcom Close Enough (2020–2022), in 2021, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television Movie as an executive producer on Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia.

In 2022, she hosted Netflix's reality series Instant Dream Home and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Program Host.

The same year Brooks starred in the superhero series Peacemaker (2022–present), and returned to Broadway in the revival of the August Wilson play The Piano Lesson.

Brooks was born in Augusta, Georgia, and grew up in Simpsonville, South Carolina, in a Christian family.

Her father Dunnel is a BMW worker and a deacon and her mother LaRita is a teacher and a minister.

She began acting at the age of six in a nativity play put on by her church.

For her final two years of high school, she attended South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities, a selective arts high school.

In 2015, she made her Broadway debut in the musical revival of The Color Purple as Sofia, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award and won the Grammy Award.

In 2023, Brooks reprised her role as Sofia in the film adaptation of The Color Purple and was nominated for an Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, and Golden Globe Award for her performance.

Brooks made her Broadway debut in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple as Sofia.

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.

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".

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.

In 2022, Brooks co-starred in James Gunn's Peacemaker television series, playing the role of Leota Adebayo. The series is spin-off of Gunn's film The Suicide Squad (2021) 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 Orange is the New Black and wrote the part of Adebayo with her in mind.

It was announced that Brooks would star in a Broadway revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson starting on September 19, 2022, directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

She also appeared in The Color Purple, a feature adaptation of the musical of the same name, directed by Blitz Bazawule.

From 2021 to 2022, Brooks voiced Lillie Carter-Grant, mother of protagonist Karma and doctor, in the animated series Karma's World.

On July 2, 2019, Brooks announced that she was pregnant with her first child.

In November, she gave birth to a girl.

She married Dennis Gelin in January 2022 in Miami, Florida.