Merle Dandridge

Merle Dandridge is an American actress and singer born on May 31, 1975, in Okinawa, Japan. Her mother is Korean and her father is African-American. The family relocated to the United States due to her father's military service, living first at Beale Air Force Base in California before settling at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska, where Dandridge spent most of her childhood. She attended Papillion La Vista High School, where she participated in the theater department and play production class. She went on to study at the Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University, now known as the Chicago College of Performing Arts, and launched her professional career in Chicago theater productions.

Dandridge's Broadway career spans from 1996 to 2019 and includes productions such as Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Spamalot. In 2006, she was cast as Kala in the original Broadway production of Tarzan. From November 9, 2017, to January 7, 2018, she starred as Papa Ge the God of Death in the Broadway revival of Once on This Island at the Circle in the Square Theater, returning to the role in a limited run from June 18 to August 19, 2018. Along with the cast, she received a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album nomination for the production's cast recording. In January 2025, it was announced that Dandridge would take over the role of Persephone in the Broadway production of Hadestown beginning February 18.

Beyond the stage, Dandridge built a substantial screen career across television and video games. She voiced Alyx Vance in the action game Half-Life 2 and its sequels, Episode One and Episode Two, and voiced Marlene in The Last of Us franchise. She earned a BAFTA Award for her voiceover performance in the 2015 game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. In 2015, she was cast as Grace Greenleaf, the estranged daughter of the Greenleaf family, in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series Greenleaf opposite Lynn Whitfield, a role she held from 2016 to 2020. That same year, she co-starred in the second season of the NBC medical drama The Night Shift as Gwen Gaskin.

Dandridge held a recurring role as Rita Roosevelt in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy and appeared in the short-lived CW series Star-Crossed in 2014. She guest starred on NCIS, 24, Criminal Minds, The Newsroom, and Drop Dead Diva, and had a recurring role in the CBS comedy Murphy Brown in 2018, playing a network boss. In 2020, she was cast in a series regular role in the eight-episode HBO Max thriller-drama The Flight Attendant, playing Kim Hammond in the first season. In 2022, she joined the ABC action series Station 19 as a series regular, portraying Natasha Seo-Yeon Ross. She reprised her role as Marlene in the 2023 HBO television adaptation of The Last of Us.