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William Jackson Harper

William Fitzgerald Harper (born February 8, 1980), known professionally as William Jackson Harper, is an American actor and playwright. He gained acclaim for his role as Chidi Anagonye in the NBC comedy series The Good Place (2016–2020), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Harper started his career as a main cast member of The Electric Company from 2009 to 2011. As a playwright, he wrote We Live Here (2010) and Travisville (2018). He made his Broadway acting debut portraying civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael in the play All the Way (2013). Harper's other notable roles on stage include Romeo & Juliet (2012), After the Blast (2017), and Primary Trust (2023). For his role as Astrov in the Lincoln Center Theatre revival of Uncle Vanya (2024) he earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

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). 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).

Early life and education

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.

Career

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

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. For his performance Harper was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. In October 2022, it was revealed that Harper joined the cast of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was released in theaters on February 17, 2023.

In 2023 he starred as Kenneth in the Eboni Booth play Primary Trust at the Roundabout Theatre Company Off-Broadway. The play ran from May 4 to July 2 at the Laura Pels Theatre. Naveen Kumar of The New York Times praised his performance writing, "Harper, who is onstage for nearly all of the production’s 95 minutes, performs with astonishing ease and vulnerability, particularly given the depths he is asked to plumb in monologues directly to the audience; he lends the currents flowing through Kenneth's interior life extraordinary subtlety and immediacy". For his performance Harper won the 2023 Obie Award for Outstanding Performance. Harper is set to return to Broadway playing Astrov in the 2024 revival of the Anton Chekov play Uncle Vanya starring Steve Carell, Alison Pill, Jayne Houdyshell and Alfred Molina at Lincoln Center. For his performance he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.