Joan Pringle

Joan Pringle is an American actress born on June 2, 1945, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. She and her sister were raised in Brooklyn, where Pringle attended an Episcopalian private school as the only Black student in her class. As a teenager she competed in track athletics. She went on to study English literature and drama at the City College of New York, then pursued a master's degree in drama at Hunter College before leaving the program to begin her acting career. Her training included study under acting teacher Uta Hagen. In 1972 she relocated to California.

Pringle's professional career began on the stage. Her Broadway debut came in 1970, when she played Rosita in a production of Camino Real. That same year she appeared on Broadway as Edith in Operation Sidewinder, the musical by Sam Shepard. She signed with Universal Studios as a contract player in 1973, the same year she made her screen debut on the television series Emergency!, playing a pregnant woman giving birth to a premature baby. Also during the 1970s, Pringle held a recurring role as Diana, the lawyer wife of Mark Sanger, on the crime drama Ironside, and recurred as nurse Beryl Keynes on Rafferty in 1977. She portrayed Esther, a friend of Erin Walton who is denied employment because of her race, in The Waltons, and appeared in a 1977 episode of Barnaby Jones titled "The Deadly Valentine." Her television work in the decade also included guest appearances on Sanford and Son and Kojak in 1974, The Bionic Woman in 1977, and Starsky and Hutch in 1978. In 1975 she replaced Lynne Moody as Tracy Curtis Taylor for the second season of That's My Mama. In film, she played Christella in J.D.'s Revenge in 1976, alongside Glynn Turman and Louis Gossett, Jr.

Beginning in 1978, Pringle took on the role of Sybil Buchanan, a high school vice principal, in the CBS drama series The White Shadow. When actor Ed Bernard departed the series, her character was elevated to principal. Concurrently, she played Polly Dawson on the series Soap. Pringle continued in The White Shadow until the series concluded in 1981, and received an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for her performance. She later stated that finding substantive roles after the show ended proved difficult. During the 1980s she guest starred on L.A. Law in 1987, Simon and Simon in 1988, and Moonlighting in 1989.

From 1989 to 1991, Pringle starred as Ruth Marshall in the NBC daytime drama Generations. She also appeared in the soap operas General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful. In 1993 she played Gwen Singleton, the boss of Barbara Eden's character, in the television film Visions of Murder, and reprised the role in the 1994 sequel Eyes of Terror. Her television credits from the period also include a guest appearance as Dr. Oberman in the first-season Friends episode "The One with the Sonogram at the End." In the 2000s, Pringle held recurring roles on two series: she played Carol Hart, the mother of Tracee Ellis Ross's character Joan Clayton, on Girlfriends, and portrayed Eunice, the mother of Flex Alexander's character, on One on One. Her film work includes the role of housekeeper Sara in Original Sin in 2001 and a judge in Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls in 2006. She subsequently appeared in the television series Being Mary Jane in 2014 and the feature film The Lost City in 2022.

In her personal life, Pringle married actor Theodore "Teddy" Wilson in 1980; the two had worked together during the second season of That's My Mama. They had twin children, Robert and Nicole, born in 1980. Wilson died in 1991. Pringle married producer Vernon L. Bolling in 1998.