Part 1

Terri made her television debut on Living Single and Sister Act 2 in 1993. Over the past 29 years, she has acted in over 60 films. These include Issa Rae’s Insecure, Oprah Winfrey’s Greenleaf, and Will Smith’s All of Us. In 2016, Terri moved into the director’s chair with a comedy called #DigitalLivesMatter, starring social media influencers Emmanuel Hudson and DC Young Fly. In 2018, she produced Merry Wishmas, starring veteran actors David and Tamela Mann. Terri continues to direct and produce popular shows on OWN TV, BET, and Bounce TV. She has a massive project with Disney in the pipeline.

Terri is a co-owner of Nina Holiday Entertainment, a film and television production company based in Atlanta. As an advisory board member for the African Film and Arts Foundation, Terri contributes to harnessing African arts and cinematic cultures.

Part 2

Part 3

She made her debut on the popular South African telenovela Isibaya. She later appeared on another telenovela, Scandal, as a troubled journalism student. Her first major appearance was in the series I’sithunzi, which was about four teenage girls who are forced into adulthood by unfair circumstances. This series explores deep societal ideas such as sexuality and socio-economic inequality. Because of her excellent work with I’sithunzi , Thuso was later nominated for the  Best Performance by an Actress Award in the 2017 International Emmy Awards. She was the only African nominated that year.

Source: The Underground Railroad

In 2021, Thuso made her first major international appearance on the Amazon historical series The Underground Railroad. This series was a success having been nominated in over 20 awards categories in 2021. From this series, Thuso was nominated for numerous awards, categories including Outstanding Performance, Best Actress, and Individual Achievement in drama. Thuso is now working on a new film Woman King, inspired by the 18th century Dahomey Kingdom, co-starring alongside Viola Davis. 

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born in Anderson, South Carolina. In between playing basketball, practicing martial arts, and writing plays, he always dreamt of being an architect. After graduating high school, he was recruited to play basketball in college, but decided to pursue a degree in Directing from Howard University. He also studied Shakespeare at the University of Oxford, later joining the Shakespeare Company of New York, where he played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Malcolm in Macbeth.

Taken from Variety 

He worked extensively in the film and arts industry has been a director, actor, playwright, and film instructor. In the early 2000s, he directed George C. Wolfe’s The Coloured Museum and Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. He also acted on television shows like All My Children, Lincoln Heights, Law and Order, and CSI: NY. His popular screenplay, Deep Azure, a play that explores issues of black-on-black violence and police brutality, was nominated for the 2006 Jeff Award for Best New Work. His first feature in a film was in 2008 on The Express: The Ernie Davis Story. He appeared on our screens again in 2010 on the series Persons Unknown. Since then, he has worked on more than 12 film projects.

When casting Black Panther, Marvel and Marvel fans agreed that he was a definite match. He even created a Wakadan accent of his own that he continued to use offscreen. His final film, Ma Rainey’s Blackbottom co-starring Viola Davis, and co-produced by Denzel Washington, skillfully sheds light on social issues through rhythm and blues. After this performance, he was posthumously nominated for Best Actor in the Golden Globe Awards, the Academy Awards, the British Film Academy Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Chadwick will be remembered for his valuable contribution to the film industry. In the hearts of many, he will always be King T’challa of Wakanda!

Tomi Adeyemi was listed in Times Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2020 and was even called the ‘The New J.K Rowlings’. Adeyemi is a novelist and creative writing coach best known for her award-winning novel, Children of Blood and Bone. Born to Nigerian immigrants, Adeyemi grew up in Chicago where she spent most of her teenage years. Her father was a physician in Nigeria but worked as a taxi driver and her mother as a cleaner. She graduated from Harvard University and set her path to Salvador in Brazil where she studied West African mythology, religion, and culture and got the inspiration to write her debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone.

Released in March 2018, Children of Blood and Bone is about a girl who tries to restore magic to her kingdom following years of suppression of magical powers by the kingdom’s rulers. Shortly after its release, it hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Best Seller List. In the same year, it was awarded the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and later became a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. Her success was crowned by Disney announcing that Lucasfilm would be turning the book into a movie.  

Her second novel, a sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance was published in December 2019. It was ranked #1 on The New York Times bestseller that same month. To add to her list of stellar achievements, Adeyemi also coaches other upcoming writers to hone their creative writing on an online course she calls The Writer’s Roadmap. As fans eagerly wait for the movie, a third book to the trilogy is rumored to be released later this year.