Afton Williamson | |
---|---|
Born | Sylvania, Ohio, U.S. | September 7, 1984
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Eastern Michigan University (B.F.A.) Alabama Shakespeare Festival (M.F.A.) |
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 2010–2020 |
Afton Williamson (born September 7, 1984 [1] ) is an American actress, best known for the lead role of Police Officer Talia Bishop in the ABC series The Rookie and as Assistant District Attorney Alison Cacao Medding in the Cinemax original series Banshee .
Williamson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Michigan University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. [2]
Williamson started as the understudy to Kerry Washington in the 2010 Broadway play Race before succeeding Washington in the role of Susan. [3] Later she has made her television debut appearing in an episode of The Good Wife . Williamson later guest starred on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , Blue Bloods , and Elementary . She had recurring roles on the CBS drama A Gifted Man from 2011 to 2012 as Autumn, and the first season of the television series Nashville as Makena. From 2014 to 2015, she had a regular role in the Cinemax network original series Banshee . In film, she made her debut in the 2011 drama Pariah .
In 2016, Williamson was cast in a leading role on the VH1 drama series The Breaks . [4] [5] She starred as Officer Wiggins in the 2016 HBO miniseries The Night Of .
In 2018, Williamson was cast in the ABC drama series The Rookie . [6] [7] In 2019, Williamson quit the show citing claims of racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and assault. [8] TVLine had reported that Williamson, who portrayed Talia Bishop, would not be returning for the second season. While the outlet initially claimed that the split was amicable, Williamson, in a lengthy Instagram post, stated that she had left the series due to having "experienced racial discrimination/racially charged inappropriate comments from the hair department." [9] Williamson also alleged that she was sexually harassed by guest star Demetrius Grosse, who portrays Kevin Wolfe in a recurring role, as well as an incident of bullying that escalated into sexual assault at a party; the head of the hair department was identified as Sallie Ciganovich. Williamson claimed that she had gone to the showrunners multiple times with these allegations, but was ignored. [9]
All involved in the allegations denied them. An investigation was commissioned through the law firm Mitchell Sillerberg and Knupp along with a third-party firm, EXTTI, which conducted nearly 400 hours of interviews and examined video and other evidence. [10] The results of the investigation were published on September 17, 2019, which found that the allegations made by Williamson had no merit, and could not be proven. Williamson stood by her claims, calling the results of the investigation "heartbreaking" and postulated that the producers had lied to cover up the truth of what happened. [11]
Year | Title | Role | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
2011 | Pariah | Mika | Dee Rees | |
2012 | Man on a Ledge | Janice Ackerman | Asger Leth | |
Abducted: The Carlina White Story | Cassandra | Television film | ||
2018 | Write When You Get Work | Valamy Vega | Stacy Cochran | |
2019 | Otherhood | Julia | Cindy Chupack | |
2020 | Still Here | Tiffany Watson | Vlad Feier |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Da Brick | Rachel | Pilot |
The Good Wife | Yarissa Morgan | Episode: "Bad Girls" | |
2011 | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | Isabelle Wright | Episode: "Reparations" |
Homeland | Helen Walker | 3 episodes (credited as Afton C. Williamson) | |
2011–2012 | A Gifted Man | Autumn | 9 episodes |
2012 | Blue Bloods | Officer Perez | Episode: "No Questions Asked" |
Royal Pains | Heather Small | Episode: "Business & Pleasure" | |
Nashville | Makena | 3 episodes | |
2013–2015 | The Following | Haley Mercury / Kate | 2 episodes |
2014–2015 | Banshee | Alison Medding | 8 episodes |
2015 | Elementary | Shauna Scott | Episode: "The Best Way Out Is Always Through" |
2015–2016 | Blindspot | Kara Sloane | 2 episodes |
2016 | The Night Of | Officer Wiggins | 5 episode |
2017 | The Breaks | Nikki | |
2018 | Shades of Blue | Katie Myers | 7 episodes |
Bull | ADA Gabrielle Ramsden | Episode: "Witness for the Prosecution" | |
The Blacklist | Lulu | Episode: "The Apothecary" | |
2018–2019 | The Rookie | Talia Bishop | Main role (season 1) |
Frederick Aaron Savage is an American actor and director. He is known for his role as Kevin Arnold in the American television series The Wonder Years (1988–1993). He has earned several awards and nominations, such as People's Choice Awards and Young Artist Awards. He is also known for playing the Grandson in The Princess Bride, and voiced the title protagonist in Oswald. Savage has worked as a director, and in 2005 later starred in the television sitcom Crumbs. Savage returned to acting in the television series The Grinder, as well as the Netflix series Friends from College.
Kevin Spacey Fowler is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.
Eliza Patricia Dushku is an American actress. She is best known for starring as Faith in the supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998–2003) and its spin-off series Angel (2000–2003). She also had lead roles in the Fox supernatural drama series Tru Calling (2003–2005) and the Fox science fiction series Dollhouse (2009–2010), for which she was a producer.
Jeffrey Michael Tambor is an American actor. He is known for his television roles such as Jeffrey Brookes, the uptight neighbor of Stanley and Helen Roper in the television sitcom The Ropers (1979–1980), as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998), George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent (2014–2017). For his role in the latter, Tambor earned two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series out of three nominations. In 2015, he was also awarded a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Pfefferman.
Leslie Roy Moonves is an American media executive who was the chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation from 2003 until his resignation in September 2018 following numerous allegations of sexual harassment, sexual assault and abuse. He has been married to TV personality Julie Chen since 2004.
Donald William Burke is an Australian television presenter, television producer, author and horticulturist. He is best known as the longtime host of Burke's Backyard, a lifestyle program produced by his wife's company CTC Productions, which ran for 17 years from 1987 to late 2004 on the Nine Network. He was also responsible for the creation of garden makeover program Backyard Blitz, starring former colleague Jamie Durie.
Bikram Choudhury is an Indian-American yoga guru, and the founder of Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga consisting of a fixed series of 26 postures practised in a hot environment of 40 °C (104 °F). The business became a success in the United States and then across the Western world, with a variety of celebrity pupils. His former wife Rajashree Choudhury assisted him in the yoga business.
Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmy Awards. He also starred in the British period drama Mr Selfridge, which tells the story of the man who created the English department store Selfridges, and portrayed Spence Kovak on Ellen DeGeneres's sitcom Ellen.
Noel Anthony Clarke is a British actor, producer, screenwriter and director. Rising to prominence for playing Mickey Smith in Doctor Who (2005–2010), he received critical acclaim for writing, directing and starring as Sam Peel in the films Kidulthood (2006), Adulthood (2008) and Brotherhood (2016) and for starring in, co-creating and writing Bulletproof (2018–2021), which all depicted black working-class characters in London.
Banshee is an American action television series created by Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler originally aired on the Cinemax network from January 11, 2013, to May 20, 2016, over four seasons, comprising a total of 38 episodes.
Lili Marie Simmons is an American actress and model known for her role as Rebecca Bowman in the Cinemax series Banshee (2013–2016).
Jason Mitchell is an American actor. Mitchell started his career acting in minor roles in films such as the action-thriller Contraband (2012), and the neo-noir Broken City (2013). He is best known for portraying rapper Eazy-E in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton. The film is considered his career breakthrough, for which he received numerous award nominations including the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture. Mitchell has also appeared in the Key and Peele comedy film Keanu (2016), the Netflix film Barry (2016), James Franco's The Disaster Artist (2017), and the blockbuster Kong: Skull Island (2017). He has also appeared in critically acclaimed film such as Kathryn Bigelow's crime drama Detroit (2017), Dee Rees' historical drama Mudbound (2017) and Janicza Bravo's black comedy Zola (2021).
#MeToo is a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture, in which people publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem.
A series of allegations concerning the involvement of British politicians in cases of sexual harassment and assault arose in October and November 2017. Allegations were prompted by discussions among junior staff employed in the UK Parliament at Westminster following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations in Hollywood earlier in October, and the subsequent rise of the #MeToo movement, but spread further to cover all the major political parties, including political figures beyond Westminster.
The 2017–18 United States political sexual scandals saw a heightened period of allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault, and resulted in the subsequent firings and resignations of American politicians. Some of the allegations are linked to the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases starting in October 2017 amid the wider MeToo movement.
Debra S. Katz is an American civil rights and employment lawyer and a founding partner of Katz Banks Kumin in Washington, D.C. She is best known for representing alleged victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment, notably Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Vanessa Tyson, Chloe Caras, and accusers of Congressmen Pat Meehan and Eric Massa, and whistleblowers facing retaliation, including most recently Dr. Rick Bright. Katz's primary practice areas at her firm are employment and whistleblower law, where she represents victims of workplace discrimination and retaliation.
The Rookie is an American police procedural crime drama television series created by Alexi Hawley for ABC. The series follows John Nolan, a man in his forties, who becomes the oldest rookie at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The series is produced by ABC Signature and Entertainment One; it is based on real-life LAPD officer William Norcross, who moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and joined the department in his mid-40s.
Douglas Holden Wigdor is a founding partner of the law firm Wigdor LLP, and works as a litigator in New York City, specializing in anti-discrimination law. Wigdor is best known for representing seven victims of alleged sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, the hotel maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, over twenty employees at Fox News in sexual harassment and discrimination cases, and former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores in a 2022 class action lawsuit against the National Football League alleging racist and discriminatory practices against Black coaches.
In March 2020, during that year's election campaign for President of the United States, Tara Reade alleged that Democratic nominee Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 in a Capitol Hill office building when she was a staff assistant in his office. Biden denied Reade's allegation.
The Alex Salmond scandal was a political scandal in Scotland concerning the conduct of former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond while in office.