Did you know the icon has a Wizard Of Oz tattoo?
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGE BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Lena Waithe is a jack of all (entertainment) trades – an actor, writer and producer. She’s developed her ownautobiographical drama series, The Chi, written the award-winning film Queen & Slim and has acting credits ranging from Master Of None to Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
The Chicago native has been an incredibly vocal advocate for the LGBTQIA community, receiving the Trailblazer Award from GLAAD for her efforts. Want to know more? Here are six facts you may not know…
She has a Wizard Of Oz tattoo
Lena has a chest tattoo with all the primary characters of The Wizard Of Oz, with Judy Garland front and centre. She got the tattoo because the film was “more than a film” to Lena.
She told NPR that it was “like a Bible to life” and a warning against thinking the grass is always greener. “The truth is when you go out there and get to the Emerald City and meet the wizard, you realise it’s all – it’s not really what you thought it was,” she said. “There is no Emerald City that will feel like home.”
Acting was never the plan
Lena’s route into acting was accidental. “It was not in my plan of things,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. She added that she always loved TV and had wanted to be a screenwriter since she was a kid, but had never planned on being an actress. “I tend to write things down that I want to do,” Lena explained. “That wasn’t on the list, but it was a wonderful surprise.”
She considers the writer’s group she was in to be her “people”
When she was an assistant on Girlfriends, Lena met Micahel Svoboda, who invited her to join a writer’s group. To this day, she’s still friends with the people that were in that group. She told NPR that joining this group was when she “found her people”.
Lena was the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing
In 2017, Lena won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for writing the Master Of None episode Thanksgiving. She was the first African-American woman to win the award.
The episode was loosely based on Lena’s personal experience of coming out to her mother. In her acceptance speech, she thanked the TV industry for embracing “a little queer Black girl”.
She mentors people from underrepresented groups in the TV industry
Hillman Grad, Lena’s production company, set up a mentorship scheme in 2020. The scheme is tuition-free and helps budding writers, actors and producers learn about how to succeed in the entertainment industry.
She voiced the first queer animated character in a Disney film
Lena was featured in Disney’s Onward as a Cyclops police officer called Spector. During the film, Spector says “My girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out”. By referencing a girlfriend, she became the first queer animated character in the company’s history.
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