Ayo Edebiri

Ayo Edebiri, born Funmilayo Edebiri on October 3, 1995, in Boston, Massachusetts, is an American actress, comedian, writer, and director. Her given name, Ayo, is a shortened form of Funmilayo and means "joy" in Yoruba. She was born to a Bajan mother and a father of the Edo ethnic group from Edo State, Nigeria, and grew up as an only child in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Her family is Pentecostal, and she attended church regularly with her parents. An eighth-grade drama class sparked her interest in comedy, leading her to join the improv club Yellow Submarine Improv at Boston Latin School. She later enrolled at New York University, where she initially planned to study teaching before switching her major to dramatic writing. During her junior year, she began pursuing comedy professionally and interned at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Edebiri's early career encompassed stand-up comedy, television writing, and digital content creation. She performed stand-up on Comedy Central's Up Next and, in 2014, appeared in an episode of the series Defectives. She wrote for The Rundown with Robin Thede and NBC's Sunnyside before joining the writing staff of the Netflix animated series Big Mouth for its fourth season. In August 2020, after Jenny Slate stepped down from voicing the character Missy, Edebiri was selected as her replacement, with her voice work beginning at the end of that season and continuing through 2025. Also in 2020, her scripted digital series Ayo and Rachel Are Single, which she co-wrote and co-starred in with comedian Rachel Sennott, began airing on Comedy Central. That same year she made an uncredited film debut in the comedy-drama Shithouse and co-hosted the Forever Dog podcast Iconography with Olivia Craighead, which released its second season in 2020. She also contributed original poetry to Eating Salad Drunk, a comedian haiku anthology edited by Gabe Henry that benefited the nonprofit Comedy Gives Back.

In 2021, Edebiri joined the cast and writing staff of the Apple TV+ period series Dickinson for its second season, where she first collaborated with Christopher Storer, who would later create The Bear. Her breakthrough came in 2022 when she was cast as Sydney Adamu, an ambitious young sous chef, in the FX on Hulu comedy-drama series The Bear. The role earned her a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, two Actor Awards, and nominations from the Gotham Awards and the Critics' Choice Awards. Also in 2022, she joined What We Do in the Shadows as a writer and consulting producer, receiving a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Episodic Comedy for the episode "Private School."

Her film work expanded significantly in 2023. She starred in the mockumentary comedy Theater Camp alongside Molly Gordon and Ben Platt, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and in the teen sex comedy Bottoms opposite Rachel Sennott, which premiered at South by Southwest. She voiced Glory Grant in the animated superhero film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, both released in 2023. That year she also appeared in the Black Mirror episode "Joan Is Awful," guest starred in the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, and appeared in The Sweet East, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight. She additionally coproduced, wrote for, and appeared in the Netflix animated series Mulligan and provided voice work for the Netflix interactive special We Lost Our Human.

Edebiri made her directorial debut with the season three episode of The Bear titled "Napkins" in 2024, for which she received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series in January 2025. Her Emmy win for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2024 coincided with Quinta Brunson's win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, marking the first time two Black actresses won both female comedy acting categories at the Primetime Emmys in the same year. Also in 2024, she voiced Envy in the Pixar film Inside Out 2 and hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Jennifer Lopez. She appeared in the music video for Tyler, the Creator's single "Noid" that same year.

In 2025, Edebiri starred in the A24 horror film Opus alongside John Malkovich, the thriller After the Hunt directed by Luca Guadagnino with Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, and played a supporting role in James L. Brooks's comedy film Ella McCay. In February 2025, she directed the music video for Clairo's song "Terrapin," which starred "Weird Al" Yankovic. That same month, it was announced she was in talks to star in and write a film based on the children's television series Barney & Friends for A24, Mattel Films, and producer Daniel Kaluuya. For season three of The Bear, she received Emmy nominations for both Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, making her the first Black woman nominated in both acting and directing comedy categories in the same year and the youngest Black woman in Emmy history to receive three acting nominations. She is also only the second Black woman nominated for comedy directing at the Emmys, after Millicent Shelton for 30 Rock in 2009. She co-wrote the season four Bear episode "Worms," which The Hollywood Reporter named one of the top ten television episodes of the year.

Edebiri made her Broadway debut in 2026, appearing in a production of Proof.