Merle Dandridge
Merle Dandridge was born in Okinawa, Japan. Her father was a member of the US military stationed there, and her mother a local Okinawan. After a childhood spent moving around, Dandridge and her family settled in Bellevue, Nebraska where she graduated from high school. She attended the Theater Conservatory at Roosevelt University in Chicago, performing in a number of theater productions, then moved to New York. Her first appearance in a Broadway show came in 2000, when she played Mary Magdalene in a production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." While she continued to work on stage, Dandridge also made inroads on screen, playing supporting roles on shows like "Angel" (The WB, 1999-2004) and "24" (Fox, 2001-2010; 2014). She landed her first prime-time recurring role in 2011 on "Sons of Anarchy" (FX, 2008-2014) and followed that up with recurring roles on alien/human romantic drama "Star Crossed" (The CW, 2014) and the hospital procedural "The Night Shift" (NBC, 2017). In 2016, she premiered in her first series regular role, playing one of the leads on "Greenleaf" (OWN, 2016-), a drama about a family that runs a Memphis mega-church, produced by Oprah Winfrey.