Jeremy O. Harris

Jeremy O. Harris (born June 2, 1989) is an American playwright, actor, and screenwriter. Harris gained prominence for his 2018 Slave Play, which received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Play. Harris is also known for his work in film and television. He produced and co-wrote the A24 film Zola, for which he received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. He acted in the HBO Max series Gossip Girl (2021), the Netflix series Emily in Paris (2022), and in the film The Sweet East (2023).

Early life and education Harris grew up in a military family, moving often before settling in Martinsville, Virginia. He has since lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Harris studied toward a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University in 2009, but was cut from the program after a year. In 2019, he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

Career 2016–2019: Early work and Slave Play

Harris landed a role in the play Jon at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He worked as an actor in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles to further his career. There he began a collaboration with musician Isabella Summers that resulted in the play Xander Xyst, Dragon 1; the play was produced at ANT Fest 2017 in New York. He had a residency at the MacDowell Colony, where he wrote the play "Daddy", in which a young black artist (Franklin) becomes involved with an older European art collector (Andre). "Daddy" served as Harris's writing sample when he applied to the Yale School of Drama, where he began studies in the fall of 2016. and won the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award at the 2018 American College Theatre Festival. Slave Play was then produced off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop under the direction of Robert O'Hara in 2018, Harris's first professional production as playwright. The play addresses sexuality and racial trauma in America. It begins with interracial sexual violence on a slave plantation in the American South and continues in present-day America at a sex therapy retreat for interracial couples. The couples include black participants who are no longer able to receive pleasure from their white partners. The white partners have a blind-spot about the role that race plays in their relationships. Critic Jesse Green summarized the play's message by saying "that one race lives with history each day while another pretends not to". Though critically acclaimed, the play drew ire from those who found the play's content disrespectful of African-American history. For the 74th Tony Awards, Slave Play was nominated for a historic total of 12 awards. This broke the record previously set by the 2018 revival of Angels in America for most nominations for a non-musical play. Harris was the winner of the 2018 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, given by the Vineyard Theatre in New York City. A profile in The New York Times said that Harris's "ability to render subconscious trauma into provocative theatrical expression, as potentially unsettling as entertaining, has earned him a lot of attention in a very short time."

In 2018, Harris was awarded the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, which includes a residency at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre. In 2019, The New Group and the Vineyard Theatre co-produced a revised version of Harris's earlier play "Daddy". starring Alan Cumming. New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley noted some excellent performances, but found the dialogue "endless and circular and repetitive" and the play too "cerebral". Using Ntozake Shange's term choreopoem to describe its structure, Harris combines language and movement in a work that centers on five characters: San Francisco writer Gary Fisher, Kathy Acker, Yukio Mishima, Samuel R. Delany, and Missouri college athlete Michael L. Johnson. It was directed by Machel Ross.

2021–present: Career expansion

In early 2020, Harris signed a deal with HBO, and is developing a pilot as well as becoming a co-producer for season 2 of Euphoria, after consulting on the first season. Later in 2020, he set $50,000 commissions for new stage work. Harris published a condensed version of his play Yell: A Documentary of My Time Here in n+1 magazine's Fall 2020 issue. Harris describes the full play as "a site-specific document of [his] time in the space of Yale School of Drama".

Harris is a co-author on the screenplay for the A24 film Zola (2021), directed by Janicza Bravo. The film follows a road trip that results in sex-trafficking, and is based on a real-life Twitter thread. It has become prevalent in theatrical performances in the United States and Britain. The performances take place at plays telling black stories written by Black playwrights and seek to bring Black audiences to such plays. The concept has also been seen as countering the negative psychological impact of double consciousness that can be experienced by black people.

Personal life Harris is gay.

On November 16, 2025, Harris was arrested on suspicion of smuggling after arriving at Naha Airport in Japan; as confirmed by Okinawa Regional Customs, 780 mg of MDMA was found in his carry-on luggage, a violation of the country's Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Law. He was released after three weeks.

Works Theatre Year Title Role Venue Ref.2017 the feels...(kms) Playwright Yale Cabaret 2017 Xander Xyst, Dragon 1 Playwright Yale Cabaret2018 Slave Play Playwright New York Theatre Workshop, Off-Broadway 2019 John Golden Theatre, Broadway 2021 August Wilson Theatre, Broadway 2024 Noël Coward Theatre, West End 2019 Daddy: A Melodrama Playwright Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre 2022 Almeida Theatre, West End 2019 Black Exhibition Playwright Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn 2019 Yell: A Documentary of My Time Here Playwright Iseman Theater, Yale School of Drama 2022 Ain't No Mo' Co-Producer Belasco Theatre, Broadway 2023 The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window Producer Brooklyn Academy of Music, Off-Broadway James Earl Jones Theatre, Broadway 2024 Invasive Species Producer Vineyard Theatre, Off-Broadway 2025 Prince Faggot Producer Playwrights Horizons, Off-Broadway 2025 Spirit of the People Playwright MainStage Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival

Unproduced plays A Boy's Company Presents: 'Tell Me If I'm Hurting You''' (2020)

Film Year Title Role Notes Ref.2021 Zola Co-writer with Janicza Bravo 2023 The Sweet East Matthew Pet Shop Days Executive producer 2025 The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick Isaac Also producer Erupcja Claude Also co-writer and producer Sacrifice Post-production

Television Year Title Role