Bio

Adepero Oduye (pronounced Add-eh-pair-o Oh-due-yay) is a Nigerian-American actress, writer, and director who hails from Brooklyn, New York. She is a Cornell University graduate whose theater credits include Danai Gurira's play Eclipsed, at the Yale Repertory Theatre, The Bluest Eye, at the Hartford Stage and Long Wharf Theatres, and Fela!, in the AEA workshop, which was directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones. Oduye made her Broadway debut opposite the late Cicely Tyson in Horton Foote's The Trip To Bountiful.

Before what many consider to be her breakout role as Alike in writer/director Dee Rees' award-winning feature Pariah, Oduye originated the role in a short of the same name. She has also appeared in films including 12 Years a Slave, The Big Short, The Dinner, and Widows, as well as several short films such as Gabriele Zamparini's Water, Russell Costanzo's The Tested, and Kay Oyegun's Imitation.

Oduye has starred in a variety of TV series including “Louie,“ two “Law & Order” franchises, a “Steel Magnolias” TV remake, “Random Acts of Flyness,” “When They See Us,” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” She wrote several episodes of the award-winning web series The Feels, and made her directorial debut In 2014 with the short film Breaking In, which was inspired by an early experience her brother had with the NYPD. In 2022, she’ll star in the TV series “Five Days at Memorial,” based upon Sheri Fink’s book of the same name that reconstructs a New Orleans hospital’s five harrowing days Hurricane Katrina.