William Jackson Harper

William Jackson Harper is an American actor and playwright born William Fitzgerald Harper on February 8, 1980, in Dallas, Texas. He grew up in Garland, Texas, attended Lakeview Centennial High School, and graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 2003. When registering with Actors' Equity Association, he adopted the professional name William Jackson Harper because most variations of "William Harper" were already taken and he considered "Fitzgerald" too long; he chose "Jackson" as his stage middle name to honor his mother's maiden name.

Harper began his New York theatre career in 2006 with the Vital Theatre Company production of Full Bloom. In 2008 he appeared in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Lynn Nottage's Ruined, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He performed in the Public Theater's mobile unit productions of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in 2010 and Titus Andronicus in 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he played Danny Rebus in the PBS Kids Go! series The Electric Company. In 2012 he starred as Marty Boy in the Public Theater premiere of The Total Bent, a musical by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, and that same year appeared in an outdoor production of Romeo & Juliet in New York alongside actress Ali Ahn, with whom he is in a relationship.

Harper made his Broadway debut in 2014 portraying civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael in Robert Schenkkan's All the Way, which starred Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon B. Johnson and centered on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The production won the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2015 he co-starred with Carrie Coon in Melissa James Gibson's Placebo at Playwrights Horizons. He also wrote two plays: We Live Here, which premiered in 2010, and Travisville, which had its world premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2018 and was inspired by the displacement of a poor Black community near the grounds of the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

In 2016 Harper was cast as Chidi Anagonye in the NBC comedy series The Good Place, created by Michael Schur, a role he had considered quitting acting before landing. The series ran from 2016 to 2020, and his performance earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2020. During a break between the show's first and second seasons in 2017, he appeared in a leading role alongside Cristin Milioti in Zoe Kazan's After the Blast at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theatre. That same year he also had a supporting role in the VH1 drama series The Breaks.

On film, Harper took a supporting role in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson in 2016. In 2019 he played Josh in Ari Aster's horror film Midsommar and James Ross in Todd Haynes's legal thriller Dark Waters. In 2021 he appeared in Barry Jenkins's Amazon Prime Video miniseries The Underground Railroad, adapted from Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, earning a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. He starred in the second season of the HBO Max series Love Life in 2021 and in the Peacock series The Resort in 2022. In 2023 he portrayed Quaz in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Harper returned to the stage Off-Broadway in 2023, starring as Kenneth in Eboni Booth's Primary Trust at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre, where the production ran from May 4 to July 2. The performance earned him the 2023 Obie Award for Outstanding Performance. He then returned to Broadway in 2024, playing Astrov in the Lincoln Center Theatre revival of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, a production that also featured Steve Carell, Alison Pill, Jayne Houdyshell, and Alfred Molina. For that role, Harper received a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play.