Shalita Grant

Shalita Grant is an American actress born on August 28, 1988, in Petersburg, Virginia. She attended the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology before transferring to the Baltimore School for the Arts in Maryland, where she earned recognition as a YoungArts Winner in Theater and a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. At seventeen, she received a scholarship to the Juilliard School, graduating in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama.

Grant's stage career began with The Public Theater's 2010 productions of Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale, and The Merchant of Venice. In 2012, she appeared in The Philanderer for the off-Broadway Pearl Theatre Company and the world premiere of Kirsten Greenidge's Luck of the Irish at the Huntington Theatre Company. That same year, she originated the role of Cassandra in Christopher Durang's comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, having been involved in the show's development from its earliest form as a one-act play. The production's world premiere took place at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, from September to October 2012, with a cast that included Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen, Genevieve Angelson, and Billy Magnussen. The show then transferred to an off-Broadway run at Lincoln Center Theatre from October 2012 through January 2013 before opening on Broadway, where Grant made her Broadway debut in March 2013, with the run continuing through August of that year.

Her performance as Cassandra earned Grant a 2013 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. The production itself won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Grant also received the 2013 Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut. She returned to the stage in 2017 at The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Following her Tony nomination, Grant relocated to Los Angeles to pursue television work. She auditioned for roles 54 times within a single year and briefly worked as a bartender while her savings ran out before landing a series regular role on NCIS: New Orleans in 2015, portraying Special Agent Sonja Percy. She departed that series in 2018 and subsequently appeared in a recurring role as FBI Agent Tess Rogers on the third season of the Netflix horror-comedy Santa Clarita Diet. In 2020, she played first-time attorney Cassidy in the third season of HBO Max's Search Party, and was cast in the main role of Sherry Conrad on the third season of the Netflix thriller You. Her additional television credits include Mercy Street and the series You. Her film work includes the short films Empire Corner and Invisible, both from 2010, as well as the Oscar-nominated short documentary Rehearsing a Dream from 2006.

Grant married commercial director Sabrina Skau in San Francisco on August 8, 2018; the two later divorced. Since 2020, she has been in a relationship with MMA fighter Jessica Aguilar.