My Life In Characters
Niecy Nash Is the Hardest Working Woman in Hollywood
The prolific actress reminisces about the roles that have fired up her career
Niecy Nash got into comedy in order to heal her mother. It wasn’t until her brother was killed in a school shooting in 1993 that she made it her daily ritual to make her mother laugh. “And once I started performing for her every day to lift her spirits, that’s when I realized comedy was a gift,” says Nash.
We know Nash for her roles as a saucy cop in Reno 911 and as a badass manicurist in Claws. That’s not all — she has played dramatic roles, like in the historical drama Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, and in When They See Us, the Netflix series on the Central Park Five.
Nash shakes up the screen in the new FX series Mrs. America, playing black feminist Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, and as a mentoring therapist in the new Mindy Kaling-directed Netflix series Never Have I Ever. She comes full circle to her early comedic roots in the reboot of Reno 911, which launched May 4 on Quibi. As Deputy Raineesha Williams in Reno 911 says: “Don’t hate me ’cause I’ve found the truth.” Here, the actress revisits some of her most memorable roles with ZORA.
