Deborah May

Deborah May is an American actress and model born on September 28, 1948, in Remington, Indiana. Before pursuing a career in entertainment, she competed in beauty pageants, winning the Miss Indiana title in 1970 and representing her state at the Miss America pageant the following year.

May's professional career began in television, with a guest appearance on The Streets of San Francisco in 1973 marking her small-screen debut. She expanded into stage work in the mid-1970s, appearing in a Great Performances filmed production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1976. Her Broadway career followed, spanning 1978 to 1979, during which she starred in Once in a Lifetime and appeared in Romantic Comedy. She joined the cast of the CBS daytime soap opera Guiding Light as a series regular from 1979 to 1980.

In 1981, May directed a documentary titled You Have Struck a Rock, which chronicles the history of nonviolent resistance by Black women in South Africa during apartheid and commemorates their contributions to the anti-apartheid movement. That same decade, she appeared in the 1983 miniseries Rage of Angels and held a recurring role as Terri Valere on the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere from 1985 to 1986. Her film work began with the 1984 comedy The Woman in Red, and she later took supporting roles in Disney's The Kid, Nurse Betty, and Johnny Be Good. Guest appearances during this period included Falcon Crest, Remington Steele, The Twilight Zone, The Golden Girls, Murphy Brown, and the Seinfeld episode known as "The Puffy Shirt," as well as both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager.

From 1992 to 1998, May played Melanie Parrish, a network executive, on the HBO comedy series The Larry Sanders Show. She also held recurring roles on the ABC crime drama Murder One from 1995 to 1996 and on the NBC medical drama ER from 1996 to 2002, and guest-starred on L.A. Law. In 2010 she appeared in a recurring capacity as Catherine Cadence in the British television series The Cut, and from 2016 to 2017 she portrayed Natania, the leader of Oceanside, on the AMC horror drama The Walking Dead.

In August 1983, May married actor George DelHoyo, with whom she has two children.