Cush Jumbo

Cush Jumbo is a British actress and writer born on September 23, 1985, at King's College Hospital in the Denmark Hill area of London. Her mother, Angela, is British, and her father, Marx Jumbo, is Nigerian. The second of six children, Jumbo grew up in the Lewisham and Southwark areas of London and began dance classes at age three. She attended Adamsrill Primary School in Sydenham and trained at Glenlyn Stage School before studying at the Francis Cooper School of Dance while enrolled at Cator Park School for Girls. At fourteen, she left Cator Park to focus on acting at the BRIT School in Croydon. She subsequently earned a first-class degree from the BA (Hons) Acting course at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Jumbo's stage career encompasses a wide range of classical and contemporary work. Her theatre credits include Brixton Stories at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Liquid Gold at the Almeida, and Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe. At the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, she appeared in productions of The Cherry Orchard, The Crucible, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Richard III, and Pygmalion, earning both MEN and Ian Charleson Award nominations. In 2012, she won the Ian Charleson Award for her performance as Rosalind in As You Like It at the Royal Exchange. That same year, she played Constance Neville in She Stoops to Conquer at the National Theatre and Mark Antony in an all-female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse, a role that earned her a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. The Julius Caesar production was revived in New York in October 2013, and Jumbo reprised the role. In May 2013, she played Nora in A Doll's House at the Royal Exchange Theatre, winning a UK Theatre Award for the performance in October of that year.

In July and August 2013, Jumbo wrote and performed in Josephine and I, a one-woman play about jazz singer Josephine Baker, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in London. The show earned her an Emerging Talent Award at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards in November 2013. The production transferred to The Public Theater in New York, where previews began on February 27, 2015. Jumbo made her Broadway debut in the autumn of 2014 in Jez Butterworth's The River, a transfer of the Royal Court Theatre production, in which she appeared alongside Hugh Jackman and Laura Donnelly. The database record for this credit lists the production under the title Over the River.

In October 2021, Jumbo played the title role in Hamlet at the Young Vic Theatre in London, directed by Greg Hersov. The performance earned her a second Olivier Award nomination, for Best Actress, as well as a Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Shakespearean Performance in 2022. From December 8, 2023, through February 10, 2024, she played Lady Macbeth opposite David Tennant in the Donmar Warehouse production of Macbeth, directed by Max Webster. In August 2025, it was announced that Jumbo would voice the narrator in Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions, a production from Audible and Pottermore. Jumbo also co-wrote the musical Rebels and Retail, a shortlisted entry in the Perfect Pitch West End Showcase 2008, and is co-author of 101 Dance Ideas for 5–11 yr Olds, published by A & C Black.

On television, Jumbo portrayed Lois Habiba in all five episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth in 2009 and appeared as DC Bethany Whelan in series two of ITV's Vera in 2012, returning for series five in 2015 and the first episode of series six in 2016. Her additional television credits include My Family, Harley Street, Lip Service, Casualty, and Getting On series two and three. She joined the CBS drama The Good Wife as attorney Lucca Quinn for the 2015–2016 season and continued in that role on the Paramount+ spin-off The Good Fight from 2017 until her departure, which she announced on May 29, 2020, after four seasons. In 2024, she starred as June Lenker in the Apple TV+ series Criminal Record.

Jumbo was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to drama. She married Sean Griffin in 2014, and the couple had a son in 2018. They divorced in 2023.