Danai Gurira
Founder
Danai Gurira is an award-winning playwright and actress. Distinguished as the first African female writer to have a play on Broadway, and to bring the perspective of African women to mainstream theater, her stage plays give voice to untold narratives. They include In the Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (Tony nomination: Best Play, NAACP Award, Helen Hayes Award: Best New Play, Connecticut Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Production of a Play), and The Convert (six Ovation Awards, L.A. Outer Critics Award). Her newest play, Familiar, received its world premiere at Yale Rep and premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons in February of 2016. Commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court, she is a recipient of the Sam Norkin Award (2016 Drama Desk Awards), a Whiting Award as well as a Hodder Fellowship.
As an actor, Gurira starred as General Okoye in Marvel’s 2018 Academy Award-winning blockbuster film Black Panther, for which she won a People’s Choice Award (Favorite Action Movie Star), an NAACP Image Award (Outstanding Supporting Actress/Motion Picture) and a shared SAG Award (Outstanding Performance by a Cast/Motion Picture). Later that year she reprised her role in Avengers: Infinity War and again in Avengers: Endgame, which went on to become the #1 top grossing film in history. She most recently starred in her final season as Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead, which remains a top-rated cable program in its tenth season. Her other acting credits include the feature films All Eyez on Me, Mother of George, The Visitor, and Shakespeare in the Park’s stage production of Measure for Measure (Equity Callaway Award). Gurira will next star in the film The Fighting Shirley Chisholm, playing the title role in the story of the first Black congresswoman and her historic 1972 presidential run.
Born in Iowa to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, Gurira holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. An ambassador for Bono’s ONE campaign, she is co-founder of Almasi Arts Alliance, which works to give access and opportunity to African dramatic artists. With a personal dedication to effect tangible change in gender equality and push global leaders toward real policy transformation, she is founder of Love Our Girls, which spotlights the specific challenges faced by women and girls while celebrating the courageous work by organizations seeking to make a difference. In December 2018 she was also named a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, supporting its mandate of gender equality and women’s rights and leveraging her celebrity as an amplifier of other women’s voices.
JAMES LEIGHTON
Creative Executive
James Leighton is originally from London, England, but moved to the US after a few years in Munich, Germany. He went to high school in Houston, Texas and then on to college at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. He began his career in entertainment as a PA on CRAZY EX GIRLFRIEND, LET’S MAKE A DEAL, and BRIGHT (Netflix). He was then hired by Unfound Content as a production coordinator and later a UPM, working on various indi features and commercials with producer Bernie Stern. After Unfound Content, he started working in development at Universal Television as a development coordinator for Eddie Schmidt Productions, working on their overall deal with Universal TV for scripted and unscripted TV series. He is now thrilled to join Danai at Gurazoo Productions and looks forward to bringing all the exciting projects Gurazoo has in store to audiences everywhere.