Happy birthday to Tony-winning performer Renée Elise Goldsberry, born Jan. 2, 1971, in San Jose, Calif. She earned her bachelor’s in theater from Carnegie Mellon in 1993 and her master’s in jazz from USC in 1997. That year, Goldsberry moved to New York, making her TV debut in Elmo’s Coloring Book. In 1997, she also secured a recurring role as one of Vonda Shepard’s back-up singers on Ally McBeal, reprising her role as an Ikette in the spin-off series Ally. While in those series, she also had a recurring role in the soap opera One Life to Live, for which she earned two daytime Emmy nominations.
Goldsberry made her Broadway debut as Nala in The Lion King and her Off-Broadway debut as Silvia in the 2005 revival of Two Gentlemen of Verona, for which she received a Drama League nomination. She returned to Broadway in The Color Purple, then took over the role of Mimi in Rent, which was taped for television. Below is Goldsberry in “Out Tonight” from that 2008 broadcast.
In the past decade, she’s had a recurring role on the TV drama The Good Wife and created the role of Angelica Schuyler in the Off-Broadway production of Hamilton, which she followed to Broadway. For her performance in that musical, she won Drama Desk, Lortel, Tony, and Grammy awards. Below is Goldsberry and the Hamilton cast in “Satisfied.”
Most recently, she joined the cast of the musical TV series Zooey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Below is Goldsberry and Lauren Graham in “The Boy Is Mine” from the series.