Chandra Wilson

Early life

Wilson was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Her mother, a postal worker, wanted to keep her daughter active, so she enrolled Chandra in numerous after-school activities. "Starting at age four, my mom decided that she was not going to have an idle child in the house," Wilson recalls. "So I started taking dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I was in acting classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was also modeling on Saturdays. And that was my childhood." "My first show was The King and I when I was five" she said in an interview with Broadway.com.

By the age of five, Wilson was performing in musicals with Houston's Theatre Under the Stars Company. She attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and continued on to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a BFA in drama in 1991. For the next four years, from 1991 to 1995, she studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute while at the same time racking up professional theater credits. She made her New York debut in a 1991 production of The Good Times Are Killing Me and won a Theater World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. Her other early stage credits include off-Broadway productions of Paper Moon: The Musical and Little Shop of Horrors.

While she was making a name for herself on the New York stage, Wilson also began to land guest spots on a variety of prime-time television shows. She appeared on The Cosby Show (1989), Law & Order (1992) and CBS Schoolbreak Special (1992). She made her big-screen debut alongside Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in the highly acclaimed 1993 film Philadelphia. Despite receiving high praise for nearly all of her performances, however, Wilson struggled for many years to gain more prominent roles. For eight years, while she pursued a career in theater, Wilson temped at Deutsche Bank in the document-processing department in order to pay her bills.

In 2005, Wilson landed her breakthrough role as Dr. Miranda Bailey on the hit ABC show Grey's Anatomy.

Career

Wilson's first regular network TV role was in the short-lived series Bob Patterson (2001), a post-Seinfeld vehicle for Jason Alexander. In a review for USA Today, Robert Bianco called Wilson "the only person in the show you can imagine wanting to see again". Similarly, the Los Angeles Times said, "The only character here that's amusingly written is Bob's new assistant, Claudia (Chandra Wilson)". She also appeared on Third Watch (2001), Law & Order SVU, Sex and the City (2002), and The Sopranos (2004), and had a small role in Lone Star (1996).

Wilson also had career in theater, where she played Bonna Willis in The Good Times Are Killing Me, and was featured in the Tony-nominated musical Caroline, or Change. Wilson is an accomplished singer and has sung in several productions, including On the Town (1998), Avenue Q (2003) and Caroline, or Change (2004).

Wilson worked as a temp at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown where she made presentations for the investment banking units. She worked at the Banker's Trust location on 130 Liberty Street, right across the street from the South Tower of the World Trade Center through 9/11 when that building was lost to the terrorist attacks. Wilson was still working at a bank when she auditioned for the Grey's Anatomy pilot. She was cast as Miranda Bailey, a role initially envisioned as a blonde-haired white woman. The show became a success. Wilson was nominated in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. She was nominated and won the Screen Actors Guild Award in 2007 for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series; she also won a SAG Award as part of the Grey's Anatomy cast, which won Best Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Wilson made her television directing debut with the episode "Give Peace a Chance", the 7th episode in season 6 of Grey's Anatomy. She also directed episode 17, "Push", of the same season and the fifth episode of season 7, "Almost Grown", the 21st episode of eight season, "Moment of Truth", "Second Opinion", the 6th episode of ninth season and "Transplant Wasteland", the 17th episode of ninth season. The part of Dr. Bailey, supervisor to the hospital interns, had been written for a petite, blonde-haired white woman, but Wilson, a full-figured African-American woman, gave such an impressive audition that the show's producers decided to give her the part. "Besides," she later joked, "I knew the casting director." Wilson earned rave reviews for her performance as the tough-as-nails Dr. Bailey. Wilson was nominated for four consecutive Emmy Awards (2006–2009) and won four consecutive NAACP Image Awards (2007–2010) for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She also won the 2008 People's Choice Award for Favorite Scene-Stealing Star. In 2009, while still starring on Grey's Anatomy, Wilson took a brief hiatus from the show to go to Broadway as Mama Morton in a revival of Chicago.

Personal life

In Parade May 2007 edition, Wilson described herself as "I'm in a relationship, but I'm not married." She has been with her partner for 31 years as of 2019. Wilson and her partner have 3 children; their daughter Serena was born in 1992, daughter Joylin was born in 1998, and son Michael was born on October 31, 2005.

Activism

Wilson is an activist for the cause of cyclic vomiting syndrome and serves as the spokesperson for the Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Association, as well as, the celebrity ambassador for CureMito! after her teenage daughter, Serena, developed the disease in 2010. For the ninth season of Grey's Anatomy Wilson met with the producers and pitched the idea of featuring cyclic vomiting syndrome in an upcoming episode. The episode, "Second Opinion", aired on November 15, 2012, and was directed by Wilson.

She also is an advocate for people with mental and/or substance use disorders. In 2015, she hosted the 10th Annual Voice Awards event for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Filmography