Lena Waithe Bio, Age, Net Worth, Fiance, The Chi, Queen & Slim, Movies, TV Shows

Last Updated on 3 months by Mcri

Lena Waithe Biography

Lena Waithe is an American actress, screenwriter and producer. Waithe is known for co-writing and acting in the Netflix comedy-drama series Master of None.

She made history becoming the first African-American woman to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for her work on Master of None in 2017.

Lena Waithe

The “Thanksgiving” episode for which she won the Emmy was loosely about her personal experience coming out to her mother. Waithe is the creator of the Showtime drama series The Chi.

Lena Waithe Age

Waithe was born on May 17, 1984 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. She is 34 years old as of 2018.

Lena Waithe Height

She stands at a height of 5′ 9″ (1.75 m).

Lena Waithe Net Worth

Waithe has an estimated net worth of $15 million. Her acting, screenwriting and producing skills are the primary sources of her income

Lena Waithe At&T

AT&T announces the 2019 Filmmaker Mentorship Program with Lena Waithe, Emmy Award Winner serving as Lead Program Mentor.  The program which was launched in 2017,  seeks to discover, incubate and empower emerging filmmakers from underrepresented communities to evolve their work, grow their audience and provide national distribution on platforms like DIRECTV and DIRECTV NOW.

Lena Waithe and Alana Mayo | Fiance

Waithe is openly lesbian. She has been in a relationship with a content executive, Alana Mayo, for three years. The two got engaged on Thanksgiving Day 2017.Lena Waithe Photo

Lena Waithe Emmy Awards

Waithe and Ansari won the Primetime Emmy Award in 2017, for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the season 2 episode “Thanksgiving”. Waithe became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy in that category.

Lena Waithe Career

After arriving in Los Ageles, Waithe secured a job as an assistant to the executive producer of Girlfriends, a long running sitcom. After a short time, she landed a minor role in Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback. Waithe later became a writer for the Fox television series Bones, a writer for the 2012 Nickelodeon sitcom How to Rock and a producer on the 2014 satirical comedy film Dear White People. Waithe wrote and appeared in the “Twenties” a YouTube series, which was produced by Flavor Unit Entertainment and optioned in 2014 by BET. Besides writing and directing the short film “Save Me”, which was shown at several independent film festivals, Waithe also wrote the 2013 web series “Hello Cupid” and the 2011 viral video Shit Black Girls Say.
Variety named Waithe as one of its “10 Comedians to Watch” in 2014. Showtime network commissioned a pilot in August 2015, for an upcoming series, The Chi, written by Waithe and produced by Common, which tells a young urban African-American man’s coming-of-age story. Waithe who is the show creator, her goal was to bring her experience growing up on the South Side and experiencing its diversity to craft a story that paints a more nuanced portrait of her hometown than is typically shown.
Closely, Waithe continues to extend her influence to support the African American community in the entertainment industry through her role as co-chair of the Committee of Black Writers at the Writers Guild. Waithe was cast in Master of None a the Netflix series after meeting creator and lead actor Aziz Ansari who, with Alan Yang, had originally written Denise as a straight, white woman with the potential, according to Waithe, to evolve into one of the main character’s love interests. “For some reason, Allison Jones thought about me for it, a black gay woman.” Yang and Ansari rewrote the script to make the character more like Waithe:
Waithe and Ansari won the Primetime Emmy Award in 2017, for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the season 2 episode “Thanksgiving”. Waithe became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy in that category. Being a lesbian, Waithe described the episode as based on her coming out experience. She sent a special message during her Emmy speech, to her LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual) family discussing how “The things that make us different—those are our superpowers.”
Waithe ended her speech by recognizing her journey as a minority saying “Thank you for embracing a little Indian boy from South Carolina and a little queer black girl from the South Side of Chicago.” Additionally, she developed an autobiographical drama series reffered to as The Chi. Waithe was named by Out Magazine as the Out100: Artist of the Year on November 8, 2017.
Waithe has written and will produce Queen & Slim, starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith directed by Melina Matsoukas. Universal PicturesIt has scheduled to release iton November 27, 2019. When she is not actively working on writing, acting, or producing, Waithe works to recruit more people of color and queer artists for her film and television projects.

Lena Waithe Movies

 Lena Waithe TV Shows

Lena Waithe Awards and Nominations