Rafael Casal | |
---|---|
Born | Rafael Santiago Casal August 8, 1985 Berkeley, California |
Education | Berkeley High School |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 2008–present |
Rafael Santiago Casal (born August 8, 1985) is an American writer, rapper, producer, director, actor, musician, and showrunner originally from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Casal grew up in Berkeley and Oakland, California. He was expelled from Berkeley High School after two years but earned his diploma through an alternative independent study program. [1] Casal later designed and served as creative director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s First Wave Spoken Word and Hip Hop Arts Programme while earning a sociology degree at night. [2]
Casal identifies as Irish, from his mother's side, and Spanish and Cuban from his father's side. [3]
At 18, Casal appeared on 3 seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam while touring, performing, and teaching nationwide with YouthSpeaks. He is a two-time Brave New Voice Poetry Slam Festival champion.
Casal has released several mixtapes online, [4] including As Good As Your Word (2008), Monster (2009), and Mean Ones (2012). He also collaborated with best friend Daveed Diggs and Chinaka Hodge to release The Getback Mixtape, vol. 1 (2007) and The BAY BOY Mixtape (2010) as the Getback Productions Crew.
In 2018, Casal and Diggs released the Collin and Miles EPs to accompany their film Blindspotting . [5]
Casal and Diggs co-founded the BARS workshop at the Public Theater in New York City. [6] The workshops serve as a platform for artists to explore and enhance their craft by merging contemporary verse with theatre.
In 2018, Casal and Daveed Diggs released their movie, Blindspotting . The duo wrote, produced, and starred in the film, which uses verse to tell the story of Oakland, California. [7]
In 2020, the movie was adapted as a comedy-drama series of the same name. Casal reprised his role as Miles and served as co-writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner. [8] The series premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 11, 2021, and began streaming on starz on June 13, 2021. Season 2 premiered at SXSW in March 2023 and began streaming on April 14, 2023. [9] In September 2023 Blindspotting was cancelled. [10]
Casal has also appeared in supporting roles in Bad Education , The Good Lord Bird and the second revival of Are You Afraid of the Dark? In 2023 he appeared as X-5/Brad Wolfe in the second season [11] of the series Loki.
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Ricochet in Reverse | Dylan Klebold | YouTube Short |
2014 | The Away Team | Cal | Web series; also creator, producer, director |
2018 | Blindspotting | Miles | Also co-producer, co-writer |
2018 | Rachel Dratch's Late Night Snack | Elliot | Season 2 Episode 7 |
2019 | Stucco | Throne - Crowning Arm | Short |
2019 | Bad Education [12] | Kyle Contreras | |
2019 | Are You Afraid of the Dark? | Mr. Top Hat | Miniseries |
2020 | The Good Lord Bird | General John Cook | Miniseries |
2021 | Blindspotting | Miles | Also executive producer, director, and writer |
2023 | Loki | Hunter X-5 / Brad Wolfe | Season 2 |
2023 | Wildcat | O.E. Parker | Appears in 9 minute Vignette “Parker’s back” |
Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress and director. Her accolades include an Academy Award, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
Richard Serrell, better known by his rap name Richie Rich, is a rapper from Oakland, California.
The Mountain View Cemetery is a 226-acre (91 ha) rural cemetery in Oakland, California, United States. It was established in 1863 by a group of East Bay pioneers under the California Rural Cemetery Act of 1859. The association they formed still operates the cemetery today. Mountain View was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who also designed New York City's Central Park and much of UC Berkeley and Stanford University.
Martin Perna is an educator and multidisciplinary artist living in Berkeley, California.
"Let's Ride" is the first single from Richie Rich's album Seasoned Veteran, released in 1996. The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart, #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and #55 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart.
George Virden Watsky is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, poet, author, and illustrator.
Emily Gerson Saines is an American talent manager and producer.
Carlos López Estrada is a Mexican-American filmmaker, music video director, commercial director, theatre director, and actor. Born in Mexico, he moved to the United States when he was 12 and later enrolled at Chapman University.
Daveed Daniele Diggs is an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. He is the vocalist of the experimental hip hop group Clipping, and in 2015, he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.
Chinaka Hodge is an American poet, educator, playwright and screenwriter. She has received national recognition for her publications, especially her artistic work on gentrification.
Small Things to a Giant is the debut studio album of rapper and actor Daveed Diggs.
Blindspotting is a 2018 American comedy-drama film written and produced by Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. The film is directed by Carlos López Estrada, and Diggs and Casal star alongside Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Wayne Knight. The plot follows a parolee with three days left on his sentence, only to have him witness a police shooting that threatens to ruin a lifelong friendship.
Jaylen Barron is an American actress, known for her roles as Dominique Winslow in the Showtime series Shameless and Zoe Phillips in the Netflix drama series Free Rein. In 2021, she began starring in the Starz series Blindspotting.
Emmy Raver-Lampman is an American actress and singer. She began her career working in musical theater, and has performed in various Broadway and national touring productions such as Hair, Jekyll & Hyde, Wicked, and Hamilton. She has played Allison Hargreeves in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy since 2019.
John Andrew Mader is an American drummer who has performed and recorded with such successful acts as Pat Benatar, Steve Miller, Josh Groban, Bonnie Raitt, Booker T. Jones, the Family Stone, Gregg Allman, Joe Satriani, Patti Austin, and Billy Sheehan among others. He has also played drums on such hit musicals as Rent, Wicked, Mamma Mia!, The Lion King, and Hamilton.
The Good Lord Bird is a 2020 American historical drama television miniseries, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by James McBride. Focusing on John Brown's attack on American slavery, the series was created and executive produced by Ethan Hawke and Mark Richard. Produced by Jason Blum, through Blumhouse Television, it premiered on October 4, 2020, on Showtime.
Michael Waldron is an American screenwriter and producer known for his work on television series Rick and Morty and Heels, creating the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Loki, and writing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).
Run the World is an American comedy television series created by Leigh Davenport, who is co-executive producer with Yvette Lee Bowser. Set in Harlem, it centers on a group of friends navigating relationships and the professional world. Run the World is produced by Bowser's SisterLee Productions and Lionsgate Television.
Blindspotting is an American comedy-drama television series and a spin-off sequel of the 2018 film of the same name. Set six months after the events of the film, the series follows Ashley, who is forced to move in with her boyfriend and father of her son's mother after Miles is suddenly incarcerated. The series co-stars Jaylen Barron, Candace Nicholas-Lippman, Benjamin Earl Turner, and Atticus Woodward.