Cleo King

Cleo King is an American actress born on August 21, 1962, in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was the youngest of seven children. She earned a degree from the University of Missouri before relocating to New York to pursue a career in theatre. Her Broadway work spans from 1994 to 2021, with credits including Jelly's Last Jam and Chicken & Biscuits, the latter of which she starred in.

King subsequently moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, where she began building an extensive television résumé. Early appearances included The Wayans Bros., Living Single, Malcolm & Eddie, Murphy Brown, Any Day Now, and a guest role as a nurse on Friends. Over the course of her career she accumulated guest appearances on more than 50 television series, among them NYPD Blue, Ally McBeal, Six Feet Under, The West Wing, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, and Ugly Betty.

Her recurring television roles include Helene Parks on the Fox drama Boston Public, which ran from 2001 to 2002 and was created by David E. Kelley. In 2003 she co-starred in another Kelley-created series, the short-lived CBS drama The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. She joined the cast of HBO's Deadwood in 2006, playing Aunt Lou during the show's third and final season, and in 2009 took on the recurring role of Neeta, the nanny of Jax Teller's son, in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy.

King is perhaps best known for her series regular role in the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly, which ran from 2010 to 2016. She played Rosetta "Nana" McMillan, the grandmother of Carl McMillan, a character portrayed by Reno Wilson — who is only seven years younger than King herself. In 2017 she appeared regularly in Netflix's adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events and played Mrs. Watkins in the film The Bye Bye Man. On February 22, 2021, she made a cameo in season two, episode six of Fox's 9-1-1: Lone Star, portraying Cynthia Strickland, the mother of Paul Strickland.

King's film work includes appearances in Magnolia (1999), Dude, Where's My Car? (2000), Bubble Boy (2001), The Life of David Gale (2003), Dreamgirls (2006), Pineapple Express (2008), The Hangover (2009), Valentine's Day (2010), and Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).