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.
