Gizel Jiménez

Gizel Jiménez is an American actress born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents — her mother Nancy from Havana and her father Pedro from Santa Clara. She was raised in New York until age 13, when the family relocated to Florida. There she attended Coral Reef High School, where she competed in classical vocal competitions, before being accepted into the New World School of the Arts in Miami, from which she earned a BFA in musical theatre.

Jiménez launched her professional career with a Broadway tour, taking on the role of Rosalia in West Side Story. Her Broadway work spans 2003 to 2010 and includes a production of Wicked, in which she played Nessarose at the Gershwin Theatre, directed by Stephen Bracket. In 2013, she appeared at the Walnut Street Theatre in In the Heights, and in 2015 she performed in The Theory of Relativity at the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Connecticut, marking her first production with Goodspeed Musicals.

Her subsequent stage work included a 2018 production of Alice by Heart at Vassar College and New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theatre, as well as a New York run of Avenue Q in which she portrayed Kate Monster. That same year, her performance in the stage musical Miss You Like Hell earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; she also performed at the ceremony. In 2019 she appeared in a production of Reefer Madness, and in 2020 she was part of the original cast of Bliss the Musical at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, playing Princess Piper.

On screen, Jiménez made her television debut in the Law and Order: SVU episode "Presumed Guilty" and appeared as the female lead in the short film Timmy Two Chins, in addition to a Comedy Central commercial alongside comedian Nick Kroll. She appeared in the 2021 musical film Tick, Tick... Boom!, followed by a recurring role as Tess on the Showtime series Dexter: New Blood in 2022. In 2024 she played Mel on the Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey. That same year, she contributed vocals to Warriors, a concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis.