Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950) is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing (2000–06), hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–15), and U.S. District Court Clerk Tina Krissman on the ABC show For the People (2018–19).

Smith is a recipient of The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2013). In 2015 she was selected as the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2016, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Theatre Arts. She is the founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University.

Early life Smith was born in 1950 into an African-American family in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Anna Rosalind (née Young), an elementary school principal, and Deaver Young Smith Jr., a coffee merchant. She has four younger siblings. She started attending school shortly after the city had started integrating the public schools, and attended both majority-black and majority-white schools during her elementary and middle school years.

Smith studied acting at Beaver College (now Arcadia University), where she was one of seven African-American women in her class, graduating in 1971. During her college career, she started to identify as Black. She earned a M.F.A. in acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California. produced by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival. This production was set in New Orleans in post-Civil War America. For the role, Smith transformed herself into a "Cajun voodoo woman." She used her ability to take on other characters in her future work. From being in a variety of situations and in a kind of outsider status, she was a close observer of people and their language. She later told Henry Louis Gates Jr., when appearing on his show Finding Your Roots, that she had difficulty getting jobs at the beginning of her acting career because people did not know how to categorize her in terms of ethnicity for casting. Both of these plays were constructed using material solely from interviews. It was also performed at the American Repertory Theater in September and October 2008. A revised version of the show had its New York City premiere Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in October 2009. It enjoyed favorable reviews and an extension into January 2010. It was a featured program as part of PBS's Great Performances series on January 13, 2012.

Smith debuted her one-woman play The Arizona Project in Phoenix, Arizona, in November 2008. The piece, which explored "women's relationships to justice and the law," was commissioned by Bruce Ferguson, director of Future Arts Research (F.A.R.), a new artist-driven research program at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

In 2009, Smith was an artist-in-residence with the Center for American Progress.

In Spring 2012, Smith was the first artist-in-residence at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, a program founded by the Very Rev Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral, who shared Smith's vision of "bringing together art and religion".

Commissioned by Grace Cathedral and the Cockayne Fund, Smith wrote and performed the play, On Grace, based on interviews relating to the meaning of God's grace. The performances were accompanied by American cellist Joshua Roman.

Film and television

Smith has appeared in several films, including Philadelphia (1993), Dave (1993), The American President (1995), Rent (2005), and Rachel Getting Married (2008).

She had recurring roles in the TV series The Practice (2000) and as Dr. Nancy McNally on The West Wing (2000–06). Smith also appeared as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime dark comedy series Nurse Jackie, which premiered in June 2009. Early in her television career, she appeared on the long-running soap opera All My Children in the recurring role of "Hazel the shampoo girl".

In February 2014, Smith appeared as a mentor in Anna Deavere Smith: A YoungArts Masterclass, part of the HBO documentary series Masterclass.

In 2015, Smith appeared as a guest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on the PBS television show Finding Your Roots. Her ancestry in America was revealed to her for the first time. She was descended from a long line of free people of color. The most striking facts were linked to her great-great-grandfather, Basil Biggs, who was born in 1820 in Maryland. Biggs and his wife Mary were listed in the 1850 U.S. census to be free. His occupation was listed as veterinarian. In 1858, he moved his wife and four children to Pennsylvania, and chose to settle in Gettysburg. Another newsworthy article was found in The Cleveland Gazette (1892), which referred to Basil Biggs as the "wealthiest Afro-American in Gettysburg", mentioning his great home on 120 acres. 41% of Smith's European ancestry is from Great Britain, with remote Scandinavian, Finnish, Russian, Italian, and Greek.

In early 2017, Smith worked with Melissa McCarthy in the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? In New York City, they filmed one scene together in which their characters briefly reunite for the first time after the long-ago end of their relationship. Smith's character is a university professor of literature. In October 2018, this film was distributed to cinemas by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

In 2022, Smith played the supporting role of Maud in the Netflix series Inventing Anna.

Teacher Smith teaches in the Department of Art & Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In 1986, she joined the faculty of the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts. From 1990 to 2000, she was a professor in the drama department at Stanford University and prior to that taught at Carnegie Mellon University. She also teaches at NYU School of Law.

Author In 2000, Smith published her first book, Talk to Me: Travels in Media and Politics, through Random House. (It was published in paperback in 2001.) In 2006, she released Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts – For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind.

In 2023, The Atlantic published the play This Ghost of Slavery: a Play of Past and Present in the December issue as part of the "On Reconstruction" project.

Honors As a dramatist, Smith was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for Fires in the Mirror, which won her a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. She was nominated for two Tony Awards in 1994 for Twilight: one for Best Actress and another for Best Play.

Smith was one of the 1996 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the "genius grant." She also won a 2006 Fletcher Foundation Fellowship for her contribution to civil rights issues, In 2009, she won a Fellow Award in Theater Arts from United States Artists. and the Cooper Union.

Smith won The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2013), one of the richest prizes in the American arts with a remuneration of $300,000.

In 2013, she received the 2012 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. In 2015 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, delivering a lecture entitled "On the Road: A Search for American Character".

She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

In spring 2024, Smith delivered the 74th A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art. The title of the series of four programs was "Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me."

Works

Film Year Title Role Notes 1982 Soup for One Deborah 1983 Touched Switch Board Operator 1987 Unfinished Business Anna 1993 Dave Mrs. Travis 1993 Philadelphia Anthea Burton 1995 The American President Robin McCall 2000 Twilight: Los Angeles Various Writer and producer; adaptation of Smith's 1994 play 2003 The Human Stain Mrs. Silk 2004 The Manchurian Candidate Political pundit 2005 Cry Wolf Headmaster Tinsley 2005 Rent Mrs. Jefferson 2007 The Kingdom Maricella Canavesio 2007 Life Support Mrs. Wallace 2008 Rachel Getting Married Carol 2010 Seizing Justice: The Greensboro 4 Narrator 2018 Can You Ever Forgive Me? Elaine 2021 Flora & Ulysses Dr. Meescham 2021 Here Today Dr. Vidor 2023 Ghosted Claudia Yates

Television Year Title Role Notes 1983 All My Children Hazel 1997 American Experience Narrator Episode: "Hawaii's Last Queen" 2000 The Practice Kate Brunner 4 episodes 2000–2006 The West Wing Dr. Nancy McNally 20 episodes 2001 100 Centre Street Ms. Davis Episode: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" 2001 Life 360 Herself Episode: "Six Degrees of Separation" 2002 Presidio Med Dr. Letty Jordan 4 episodes 2009–2015 Nurse Jackie Gloria Akalitus 78 episodes 2013 The Surgeon General Vice President TV movie 2014 Anna Deavere Smith: A YoungArts Masterclass Herself / Mentor Documentary 2015–2022 Black-ish Alicia 10 episodes 2015 Madam Secretary Attorney General Mary Campbell Episode: "Tamerlane" 2016 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Warden Lucille Fenton Episode: "Nationwide Manhunt" 2016 Legends of Tomorrow Cinnamon / Chay-Ara (19th century incarnation) Episode: "The Magnificent Eight" 2016 BoJack HorsemanBetty BruceEpisode: "Stop the Presses" 2016 Berlin Station Polygraph Examiner Episode: "False Negative" 2018–2019 For the People Tina Krissman 20 episodes 2020 A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All VoteNancy McNallyTV special 2022 Inventing Anna Maud 8 episodes

Stage Year Title Role Location Notes 1974 Horatio The savage American Conservatory Theater 1976 Alma, the Ghost of Spring Street Marie Laveau La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club 1980 Mother Courage and Her Children Kiowa woman / Their children New York Shakespeare Festival 1982–83 On the Road Clear Space TheatreBerkeley Repertory Theatre 1983 The Merry Wives of Windsor Mistress Quickly Off-Broadway A Birthday Party and Aunt Julia's Shoes Ward-Nasse Gallery Original poems Tartuffe Doreen Geva Theatre Center 1984 Charlayne Hunter Gault Ward-Nasse Gallery Aye, Aye, Aye, I'm Integrated The American Place Theatre 1985 Building Bridges, Not Walls National Conference of Women and the Law 1986 On the Road, ACT American Conservatory Theater 1988 Voices of Bay Area Women Phoenix Theatre, San FranciscoAmerican Conservatory Theater 1988 Chlorophyll Post-Modernism and the Mother Goddess / A Conversation Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre 1992 Fires in the Mirror Various The Public Theater Writer; one-woman show 1994 Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 Various Cort Theatre Writer; one-woman show 1997, 1999 House Arrest Arena StageMark Taper Forum Writer 2008 The Arizona Project Various Herberger Theater Center Writer; one-woman show 2008–10 Let Me Down Easy Various Long Wharf TheatreAmerican Repertory TheaterSecond Stage Theatre Writer; one-woman show 2014 On Grace Various Harris Theater Writer; collaboration with Joshua Roman 2015 Reclaiming Grace in the Face of Adversity Various One-woman show Never Givin' Up The Broad Stage One-woman show Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education — The California Chapter Various Berkeley Repertory Theatre One-woman show 2016 Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education Various American Repertory Theatre One-woman show Second Stage Theatre One-woman showSpecial Citation from the Obie Awards 2026 Basil Biggs Wilma Theater Workshop production produced by ArtPhilly