Chandra Wilson
Now in her 18th season on ABC’s award-winning, critically acclaimed drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” original cast member Chandra Wilson has received the Screen Actors Guild, People’s Choice, Prism and three NAACP Image Awards, as well as four Emmy® Award nominations, for her portrayal of Miranda Bailey. She has also received an NAACP Image and Women’s Image Network Award in directing for “Grey’s Anatomy,” having directed several episodes since season six. This opened the door to her directing on ABC’s “Scandal” and three episodes of Freeform’s “The Fosters.” She has graced the covers of Essence, Entertainment Weekly, JET, Heart and Soul, Life and TV Guide magazines, and has been featured in Ebony, Parade, Venice and Working Mother magazines.
Starting at age 5, the Houston native performed for 10 years in major musicals with Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS). At Houston’s Ensemble Theatre, she portrayed Li’l Bits in “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show” and was later honored with their Rising Star Award for her professional accomplishments. She graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and later went on to get her BFA in drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she spent four years training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.
Wilson starred in the short film “Muted,” which won the 2014 HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival, and won Best Acting Performance at the 2015 SOHO International Film Festival for the role. Also on the big screen, she appeared in “Frankie and Alice,” starring Halle Berry and directed by Geoffrey Sax; “Lone Star,” directed by John Sayles; “Philadelphia,” directed by Jonathan Demme; and the documentary “Autism in America,” in which she serves as narrator.
Wilson gave a Prism Award-winning and Emmy-nominated performance in Hallmark Channel’s “Accidental Friendship.” Other television credits include ABC’s “Bob Patterson” as series regular Claudia Hopper, and guest starring on “General Hospital,” “The Sopranos,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Sex and the City,” “Third Watch,” “100 Centre Street,” “Cosby,” “Law & Order” and “The Cosby Show.” She recurred on “One Life to Live” and “Queens Supreme,” and was a lead in the CBS Schoolbreak special “Sexual Considerations.” National television commercials include Blockbuster Video, Burger King, Scope and the United Negro College Fund, as well as numerous radio commercials.
Broadway credits include Matron Mama Morton in the musical “Chicago,” Gary Coleman in “Avenue Q,” Dotty Moffett in “Caroline, or Change,” and Flossie’s Friend in “On the Town,” the latter two directed by George C. Wolfe. Wilson portrayed Bonna Willis in Lynda Barry’s “The Good Times Are Killing Me” at the Second Stage and Minetta Lane theatres, which won her a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. She was in “Caroline, or Change” at the Public Theatre, “The Miracle Worker” at Charlotte Repertory Theatre, musical “Paper Moon” at the Papermill Playhouse, Theresa Rebeck’s “The Family of Mann” at the Second Stage Theatre, “Believing” for the Young Playwright’s Festival at Playwrights Horizons, “Little Shop of Horrors” at the Falmouth Playhouse, and the Shakespeare in the Park revival of “On the Town.”
Wilson has been a spokesperson for the Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Association (www.CVSAonline.org) and speaks out for organizations like www.mitoaction.org whose mission is to increase awareness and understanding of mitochondrial disease and its related functional disorders. She manages the Sermoonjoy Scholarship Fund, which provides college scholarships to Theatre Department graduates at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and the Sermoonjoy Fellowship Fund, which provides annual fellowships to mid-career actors. More philanthropic information can be found at www.sermoonjoy.org and www.chandrawilson.com.
