Chandra Wilson
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Chandra Danette Wilson (born August 27, 1969) is an American actress and director. She is best known for her role as Dr. Miranda Bailey in the
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television drama In film and television show, television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or docudrama, semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humour, humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms t ...
''
Grey's Anatomy ''Grey's Anatomy'' is an American medical drama television series that premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The series focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they develop into se ...
'' since 2005, for which she has been nominated for the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress four times. She also played the character of Bailey on ''
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'' and ''
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''. She made her New York stage debut in 1991 and began to land guest spots on a variety of prime-time television shows. She made her first film appearance in the 1993 film ''
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''.


Early life

Wilson was born and raised in
Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
. Her mother, a postal worker, wanted to keep her daughter active, so she enrolled Chandra in numerous after-school activities. "Starting at age four, my mom decided that she was not going to have an idle child in the house," Wilson recalls. "So I started taking dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I was in acting classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was also modeling on Saturdays. And that was my childhood." "My first show was ''The King and I'' when I was five" she said in an interview with Broadway.com. By the age of five, Wilson was performing in musicals with Houston's Theatre Under the Stars Company. She attended Houston's
High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (Kinder HSPVA, HSPVA or PVA) is a secondary school located at 790 Austin Street in the downtown district of Houston, Texas. The school is a part of the Houston Independent School District. ...
and continued on to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a BFA in drama in 1991. For the next four years, from 1991–95, she studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute while at the same time racking up professional theater credits. She made her New York debut in a 1991 production of The Good Times Are Killing Me and won a Theater World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. Her other early stage credits include off-Broadway productions of Paper Moon: The Musical and Little Shop of Horrors. While she was making a name for herself on the New York stage, Wilson also began to land guest spots on a variety of prime-time television shows. She appeared on ''
The Cosby Show ''The Cosby Show'' is an American television sitcom co-created by and starring Bill Cosby, which aired Thursday nights for eight seasons on NBC between September 20, 1984, until April 30, 1992. The show focuses on an upper middle-class African- ...
'' (1989), ''
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'' (1992) and ''CBS Schoolbreak Special'' (1992). She made her big-screen debut alongside
Tom Hanks Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Ha ...
and
Denzel Washington Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been described as an actor who reconfigured "the concept of classic movie stardom". Throughout his career spanning over four decades, Washington ha ...
in the highly acclaimed 1993 film ''
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
''. Despite receiving high praise for nearly all of her performances, however, Wilson struggled for many years to gain more prominent roles. For eight years, while she tried to break into major stardom, Wilson worked part-time as a teller at
Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
in order to make ends meet. In 2005, Wilson landed her breakthrough role as Dr.
Miranda Bailey Miranda Bailey, M.D., F.A.C.S. is a fictional character from the medical drama television series ''Grey's Anatomy''. The character was created by series creator and producer Shonda Rhimes, and has been portrayed by actress Chandra Wilson since the ...
on the hit ABC show ''
Grey's Anatomy ''Grey's Anatomy'' is an American medical drama television series that premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The series focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they develop into se ...
''.


Career

Wilson's first regular network TV role was in the short-lived series '' Bob Patterson'' (2001), a post-''
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'' vehicle for
Jason Alexander Jay Scott Greenspan (born September 23, 1959), known professionally as Jason Alexander, is an American actor, comedian, host and director. An Emmy and Tony winner, he is best known for his role as George Costanza in the television series '' Se ...
. In a review for ''
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'', Robert Bianco called Wilson "the only person in the show you can imagine wanting to see again". Similarly, the ''Los Angeles Times'' said, "The only character here that's amusingly written is Bob's new assistant, Claudia (Chandra Wilson)". She also appeared on ''
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'' (2001), ''
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'', ''
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'' (2002), and ''
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'' (2004), and had a small role in '' Lone Star'' (1996). Wilson also had career in theater, where she played Bonna Willis in ''The Good Times Are Killing Me'', and was featured in the Tony-nominated musical ''
Caroline, or Change ''Caroline, or Change'' is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music. The show ran both Off-Broadway and on Broad ...
''. Wilson is an accomplished singer and has sung in several productions, including '' On the Town'' (1998), ''
Avenue Q ''Avenue Q'' is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of PBS' ...
'' (2003) and ''
Caroline, or Change ''Caroline, or Change'' is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music. The show ran both Off-Broadway and on Broad ...
'' (2004). Wilson worked as a temp at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown where she made presentations for the investment banking units. She worked at the Banker's Trust location on 130 Liberty Street, right across the street from the South Tower of the
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through 9/11 when that building was lost to the terrorist attacks. Wilson was still working at a bank when she auditioned for the ''
Grey's Anatomy ''Grey's Anatomy'' is an American medical drama television series that premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The series focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they develop into se ...
'' pilot. She was cast as
Miranda Bailey Miranda Bailey, M.D., F.A.C.S. is a fictional character from the medical drama television series ''Grey's Anatomy''. The character was created by series creator and producer Shonda Rhimes, and has been portrayed by actress Chandra Wilson since the ...
, a role initially envisioned as a blonde-haired white woman. The show became a success. Wilson was nominated in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 for an
Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. She was nominated and won the
Screen Actors Guild The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to m ...
Award in 2007 for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series; she also won a SAG Award as part of the ''Grey's Anatomy'' cast, which won Best Ensemble in a Drama Series. Wilson made her television directing debut with the episode "Give Peace a Chance", the 7th episode in
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of ''Grey's Anatomy''. She also directed episode 17, "Push", of the same season and the fifth episode of
season 7 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...
, "Almost Grown", the 21st episode of eight season, "Moment of Truth", "Second Opinion", the 6th episode of ninth season and "Transplant Wasteland", the 17th episode of ninth season. The part of Dr. Bailey, supervisor to the hospital interns, had been written for a petite, blonde-haired white woman, but Wilson, a full-figured African-American woman, gave such an impressive audition that the show's producers decided to give her the part. "Besides," she later joked, "I knew the casting director." Wilson earned rave reviews for her performance as the tough-as-nails Dr. Bailey. Wilson was nominated for four consecutive Emmy Awards (2006-2009) and won four consecutive NAACP Image Awards (2007-2010) for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She also won the 2008 People's Choice Award for Favorite Scene-Stealing Star. In 2009, while still starring on ''Grey's Anatomy'', Wilson took a brief hiatus from the show to go to Broadway as Mama Morton in a revival of ''
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''. Wilson explained the only difference between her acting career now and her acting career a decade ago is that people actually recognize her on the street. "The only difference in my career now is the visibility I have," she insisted. "People say I made it now, but I feel like I made it doing summer stock." She is also clear-headed about the fragility of her new-found fame and fortune. Upon finally leaving her job at Deutsche Bank to focus solely on her role in ''Grey's Anatomy'', Wilson was careful not to burn any bridges. She said, "They told me I could come back if acting doesn't work out. I told them, 'Keep my seat warm.'" In 2014, Wilson made a guest starring appearance on the
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''
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'' as patient Tina Estrada. In 2018, she appeared on ''General Hospital'' as Dr. Linda Massey. In April 2019, it was announced Wilson will make a third guest star appearance on ''General Hospital'', but this time as Sydney Val Jean in May 2019.


Personal life

In ''
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'' May 2007 edition, Wilson described herself as "I'm in a relationship but I'm not married". She has been with her partner for 31 years as of 2019. Wilson and her partner have 3 children; their daughter Sarina was born in 1992, daughter Joylin was born in 1998, and son Michael was born on October 31, 2005.


Activism

Wilson is an activist for the cause of cyclic vomiting syndrome and serves as the spokesperson for the Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Association, as well as, the celebrity ambassador for CureMito! after her teenage daughter, Sarina, developed the disease in 2010. For the ninth season of ''
Grey's Anatomy ''Grey's Anatomy'' is an American medical drama television series that premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The series focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they develop into se ...
'' Wilson met with the producers and pitched the idea of featuring cyclic vomiting syndrome in an upcoming episode. The episode, "Second Opinion", aired on November 15, 2012 and was directed by Wilson. She also is an advocate for people with mental and/or substance use disorders. In 2015, she hosted the 10th Annual Voice Awards event for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.


Filmography


Film


Television


Director


Stage


Awards and nominations


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Chandra 1969 births Living people Tisch School of the Arts alumni Actresses from Houston Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners American women television directors African-American television directors American television directors American television actresses African-American actresses American film actresses American musical theatre actresses American stage actresses 20th-century American actresses 21st-century American actresses High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alumni African-American women singers