Famous for playing Anika Calhoun on the musical soap opera Empire, she is also known for her professional theatrical work, which includes performances in off Broadway and Chicago productions of Venus Flytrap and Tartuffe.
She received an undergraduate degree in Theater from the University at South Florida and an MFA in Acting from the University of California, Irvine.
Empire, which began airing on the Fox network in 2015, marked her television debut.
The child of deaf parents, she was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, and raised primarily in the Cayman Islands. In April of 2016 she married her Empire co-star Trai Byers.
She and Terrence Howard were both in the cast of Empire.
