McKinley Belcher III

McKinley Belcher III is an American actor and writer born in Atlanta, Georgia, at Grady Memorial Hospital, the first son of McKinley Belcher Jr. and Pamela McGhee Belcher. The family relocated to Powder Springs, Georgia, where Belcher attended elementary and middle school before graduating from Campbell High School in Smyrna in 2002, having participated in the International Baccalaureate program and competed in track and cross country. He earned a B.A. in Communication Studies and Political Science from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2006, where he was a member of the Speech and Debate Team and received recognition as both a debater and individual speaker. He subsequently completed an MFA in Acting at the USC School of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles in 2010, where he received the Ava Greenwald Memorial Award.

Belcher's stage career began Off-Broadway with an appearance in Romeo and Juliet at Classic Stage Company in 2013. In 2015, he appeared as Sam in Darko Tresnjak's world premiere production of Rear Window at Hartford Stage, alongside Kevin Bacon. The following year, he won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance for his portrayal of amateur boxer Fish in Marco Ramirez's The Royale at Lincoln Center, directed by Rachel Chavkin. In 2017, Belcher played the dual roles of Teddy and Nicholas in the world premiere of Ken Urban's A Guide for the Homesick at the Huntington Theatre Company, earning both an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actor and an IRNE Award for Best Actor. His 2019 performance as Rashad in MCC's Off-Broadway production of The Light brought him a nomination for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play.

Belcher made his Broadway debut in 2020 as Private Louis Henson in the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway premiere of A Soldier's Play, a role originally played by Samuel L. Jackson in the Off-Broadway production. In the 2022–2023 Broadway season, he portrayed Happy Loman in a production of Death of a Salesman that featured the first African-American Loman family in Broadway history, alongside Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, Khris Davis, and André De Shields.

On screen, Belcher made his film debut in John Sayles' 2013 independent film Go for Sisters, playing Rodney, the son of Lisa Gay Hamilton's character. In 2015, he appeared in David Simon's HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, directed by Paul Haggis, as Dwayne Meeks, the son of LaTanya Richardson Jackson's character. He went on to star as Samuel Diggs, a free man concealing medical knowledge and ability while working as a laborer, across two seasons of the Ridley Scott-produced PBS Civil War drama Mercy Street. In 2018, he was cast as Anthony Carter in Fox's drama The Passage, based on Justin Cronin's novel of the same name. Belcher collaborated with David Simon a second time in HBO's 2022 limited series We Own This City, portraying real-life Baltimore Police Department officer and Gun Trace Task Force member Momodu Gondo. That same year, he joined the cast of Netflix's live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga One Piece as Arlong, and also appeared as Agent Trevor Evans in the Netflix crime thriller Ozark. In 2024, he took on a leading role as police detective Michael Ledroit in the Netflix drama miniseries Eric, for which he received a 2025 BAFTA TV Award nomination in the Supporting Actor category. He also starred in the Netflix limited series Zero Day opposite Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons.

Belcher married artist Blake Fox on January 17, 2023, in Hoboken, New Jersey, in a ceremony officiated by his Death of a Salesman co-star André De Shields.