William Jackson Harper

Also that year, he voiced John Mercer Langston in season one of the Airship podcast 1865, which details the weeks immediately following the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln.

The play revolved around the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The production went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play.

William Fitzgerald Harper (born February 8, 1980), known professionally as William Jackson Harper, is an American actor and playwright.

William Fitzgerald Harper was born on February 8, 1980, in Dallas, Texas.

Harper grew up in Garland, Texas, and attended Lakeview Centennial High School.

He graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 2003.

Harper chose the stage name "William Jackson Harper" when registering for the Actors' Equity Association; most variations of "William Harper" were already in use, and he thought that "Fitzgerald" was too long.

He then decided to honor his mother by using her maiden name, "Jackson", as his stage middle name.

Harper made his NY stage debut in the 2006 Vital Theatre Company production of Full Bloom, a play about teenagers coming to terms with their sexuality.

In 2008 he performed in Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Lynn Nottage's play, Ruined, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Harper started his career as a main cast member of The Electric Company from 2009 to 2011.

From 2009 to 2011, he played Danny Rebus in the PBS series The Electric Company.

As a playwright he wrote We Live Here (2010) and Travisville (2018).

In 2010 he appeared in the Public Theater's mobile unit production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and in 2011 returned for Titus Andronicus, this time at the Anspacher Theater.

Harper's other notable roles on stage include Romeo & Juliet (2012), After the Blast (2017), and Primary Trust (2022).

He starred as Marty Boy in debut of The Total Bent, a musical composed by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, that premiered at The Public Theater in 2012.

The show was later reworked around Ato Blankson-Wood.

He made his Broadway acting debut portraying civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael in the play All the Way (2013).

Harper made his Broadway debut in 2014 portraying Stokely Carmichael in the Robert Schenkkan play All the Way starring Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Harper and Carrie Coon co-starred together in the 2015 Melissa James Gibson play, Placebo at Playwrights Horizon Theater.

Marilyn Stasio of Variety praised him writing, "Harper inhabits the difficult role as comfortably as someone who lives in robe and slippers".

He gained acclaim for his role as Chidi Anagonye in the NBC comedy The Good Place (2016–2020), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Harper has taken supporting roles in films such as Paterson (2016), Midsommar (2019), and Dark Waters (2019).

He portrayed Quaz in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).

The following year he took a supporting role in the Jim Jarmusch drama Paterson (2016) starring Adam Driver.

In 2016, Harper was cast on the NBC comedy The Good Place created by Michael Shur.

Before landing the role of Chidi Anagonye, he considered quitting acting.

Harper did not learn about the show's real premise until after he was cast.

In 2017, in between filming the show's first and second seasons, he had a leading role alongside Cristin Milioti in Zoe Kazan's futuristic romantic drama After the Blast at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theatre.

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "[Kazan] has...elicited superb performances from the lead actors, with Harper quietly persuasive as the husband desperately trying to keep his marriage intact".

Also in 2017 he had a supporting role in the VH1 drama series The Breaks.

In 2018, Harper's play Travisville had its world premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, he revealed that the play was inspired by the displacement of a poor Black community that was situated near the grounds of the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

The same year, he appeared in the sci-fi film They Remain.

In 2019, he starred in two critically acclaimed films, playing Josh in the Ari Aster directed horror film Midsommar and James Ross in the Todd Haynes legal thriller Dark Waters.

He has starred in the Amazon limited series The Underground Railroad (2020), the second season of the HBO Max comedy series Love Life (2021) and in the Peacock comedy mystery series The Resort (2022).

His performance has received critical praise and he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2020.

It was announced in April 2020 that he would narrate the Marvel audio book series, Black Panther: Sins of the King, and in November 2020, that he would star in season 2 of the HBO Max anthology series, Love Life.

In 2021 he acted in the Barry Jenkins directed Amazon Prime Video miniseries The Underground Railroad adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 historical novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead.