Lena Waithe

Lena Waithe (born May 17, 1984) is an American actress, producer, and screenwriter. She is known for co-writing and acting in the Netflix series Master of None. Waithe made history at the 69th annual Primetime Emmy Awards when she won Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for her work on Master of None, becoming the first black woman to do so. The "Thanksgiving" episode for which she won the Emmy was partially based on her personal experience coming out to her mother. She is the creator of the Showtime series The Chi.\n', ' Waithe was born in Chicago, Illinois. Though acting was not originally among Waithe\'s ambitions, she knew from the age of seven that she wanted to be a television writer, and received strong family support for her writing from her single mother and grandmother: her parents had divorced when she was three. Waithe\'s father died when she was fourteen. Waithe and her sister grew up on the South Side of Chicago until Waithe was age twelve, and attended a local, mostly African-American Elementary magnet school, Turner-Drew but moved to Evanston and finished middle school at Chute Middle School. She graduated from Evanston Township High School and earned a degree in Cinema and Television Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2006, praising faculty playwright Michael Fry for his teaching and encouragement. Finding more ways to involve herself in the television and film industry, she also worked at a movie theater as well as the media department of a Blockbuster. She moved to Los Angeles in 2006, supported by a locational transfer of her aforementioned Blockbuster job, to begin pursuing her true ambitions.\n', ' Having arrived in Los Angeles, Waithe secured a job as an assistant to the executive producer of Girlfriends (2000 TV series), a long running sitcom. Soon after, she landed a minor role in Lisa Kudrow\'s The Comeback. She later became a writer for the Fox television series Bones, a writer for the 2012 Nickelodeon sitcom How to Rock, and a producer on the 2014 satirical comedy film Dear White People. Waithe wrote and appeared in the YouTube series "Twenties" which was produced by Flavor Unit Entertainment and optioned in 2014 by BET. In addition to writing and directing the short film "Save Me", which was shown at several independent film festivals, Waithe wrote the 2013 web series "Hello Cupid" and the 2011 viral video Shit Black Girls Say.\n', '