Ari'el Stachel

Ari'el Stachel is an American actor born on July 29, 1991, in Berkeley, California, best known for his work in the Broadway musical The Band's Visit, for which he received the 2018 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical.

Stachel was raised in Berkeley by his mother, Laura Stachel, an Ashkenazi Jew from New York, and his father, Aaron Yeshayahu, the son of Yemenite Jewish immigrants who was born and raised in Israel. His parents met at a Jewish Yiddish folk dancing event in San Francisco and later divorced when Stachel was young. Growing up, Stachel struggled with his mixed ethnic heritage. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, which occurred while he was in fifth grade, he told friends he was half Black rather than risk being identified as part Arab. As a teenager, he distanced himself from his father in public and excluded him from his high school graduation, not wanting to be associated with his father's Middle Eastern appearance. He has credited his casting in The Band's Visit as the turning point at which he finally embraced his background.

Stachel's first stage experience came at age 15 in a school musical, after which he left Berkeley High School to enroll at the Oakland School for the Arts. He subsequently studied drama at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating, he accumulated stage credits and made television appearances on the CBS drama Blue Bloods and the Netflix series Jessica Jones. He auditioned seven times over nine months before being cast in The Band's Visit, which opened on Broadway in 2017. His performance earned him nominations for the Lortel Award and the Drama Desk Award before he took home the Tony. In his acceptance speech, Stachel thanked his parents and spoke openly about his long struggle with his identity, telling the audience that a person's greatest obstacle may become their purpose.

Following his Broadway success, Stachel expanded his work across multiple platforms. In 2019, he began starring in the LGBTQ+ fantasy podcast The Two Princes as Prince Amir. In 2020, he joined Law and Order: Special Victims Unit as a recurring cast member, playing Sergeant Hasim Khaldun. That same year, he was cast alongside David Hyde Pierce in The Public Theater's musical adaptation of the 2007 film The Visitor, in which he was set to play Tarek, an undocumented Syrian refugee. Stachel publicly discussed his approach to the role's accent in an interview with Playbill, stating his intention to perform the character's English without any indication that he had not been raised in the United States. The production's Off-Broadway premiere was initially postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, during which The Public Theater released a video of a musical number featuring Stachel. When the show was scheduled to open in October 2021, it was delayed days before previews were to begin in order to address concerns about depictions of race and Arab-American representation. Shortly afterward, it was announced that Stachel and the theater's leadership had reached a mutual decision for him to depart the production. He was replaced by his understudy, Ahmad Maksoud. Stachel appeared in the 2021 film Zola, playing Sean, the title character's fiancé.

Stachel wrote and performed a one-man show titled Out of Character, directed by Tony Taccone, which ran at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 2025. The piece addressed his complicated relationship with his ethnic and religious identity as well as his experiences with anxiety. In September 2025, LaChanze Productions announced it would bring the show to Off-Broadway under a new title, Other. The production opened on October 19, 2025, at the Greenwich House Theatre as a limited engagement scheduled to run through December 6.

In his personal life, Stachel has been in a relationship with actor KiKi Layne, whom he met on the set of Don't Worry Darling in the fall of 2020.