Ayo Edebiri

Ayo Edebiri (born October 3, 1995) is an American actress, comedian, and television writer. She has played chef Sydney Adamu in the comedy-drama series The Bear since 2022, for which she has won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Edebiri has also served as a writer and voice actor on Big Mouth since 2020 and has written for the comedy series What We Do in the Shadows in 2022. In 2023, she voiced roles in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and had starring roles in the comedy films Theater Camp and Bottoms. In 2024, she voiced Envy in Inside Out 2.

Early and personal life
Edebiri was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 3, 1995, to a Barbadian mother and Nigerian father. She is an only child, and she was raised in the Dorchester neighborhood. Her family is Pentecostal, and she regularly attended church services with her parents. Edebiri first became interested in comedy through an eighth grade drama class, which led her to join the improv club at Boston Latin School. She attended New York University, where she initially intended to study teaching before switching her major to dramatic writing. During her junior year of college, Edebiri began pursuing a career in comedy and interned at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Edebiri is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and has frequently canvassed for the organization. She identifies as queer.

2014–2021: Early work
In 2014, Edebiri acted in an episode of the series Defectives. Edebiri started her career as a stand-up comedian and performed a stand-up set on Comedy Central's Up Next. Edebiri's scripted digital series Ayo and Rachel Are Single began airing on Comedy Central in May 2020, which she cowrote and co-starred in with her friend and fellow comedian Rachel Sennott. She made her film debut in the 2020 comedy-drama Shithouse, in an uncredited role. Edebiri co-hosts a podcast called Iconography with Olivia Craighead that features interviews with guests in conversation about their shared personal icons. The podcast is produced by Forever Dog and the second season was released in 2020.

A television writer, she has written for the sole seasons of The Rundown with Robin Thede and NBC's Sunnyside. Edebiri joined the writing staff of Big Mouth for the show's fourth season. After Jenny Slate stepped down from voicing the character Missy so the role could be played by a black actress, Edebiri auditioned and was selected as the replacement in August 2020. Her voice acting as the character began at the end of the show's fourth season. She was a writer and actress in Dickinson 's second season on Apple TV+, where she first worked with Christopher Storer, who went on to create The Bear. She acted in a supporting role in the 2022 film adaptation of the Jennifer E. Smith YA novel Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between.

2022–present: breakthrough and The Bear
In 2022 Edebiri gained wider prominence as a main cast member on the FX on Hulu series The Bear. She received a Golden Globe Award and Independent Spirit Award and nominations from the Gotham Awards and the Critics' Choice Awards for her role as Sydney Adamu, an ambitious young sous chef. She also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian praised her performance declaring her as "magnificent" and "still lighting up and punching up every scene she is in". Edebiri made her directorial debut in the season three episode "Napkins" (2024).

Also in 2022, she became a writer and consulting producer on the FX series What We Do in the Shadows, earning a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Comedy for the episode "Private School". Edebiri coproduced, appeared and served as a writer on Mulligan (2023), an animated series for Netflix. She provided voice acting as Ham in the Netflix interactive special We Lost Our Human. Also in 2023, she appeared in an episode of the Mel Brooks Hulu series History of the World, Part II and the Black Mirror episode "Joan Is Awful". She also voiced roles in the Disney Channel series Kiff and the Max series Clone High. Later that year, she voiced Glory Grant in the animated superhero sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and April O'Neil in the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Both of the films received critical acclaim and were financially successful.

Also in 2023, she starred in the mockumentary comedy film Theater Camp alongside Molly Gordon and Ben Platt. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews, with many comparing it to the films of Christopher Guest. Later that year, she guest starred in Abbott Elementary and starred in the teen sex comedy Bottoms opposite Rachel Sennott. Bottoms premiered at South by Southwest. Katie Walsh of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Sennott and Edebiri deliver two of the funniest performances of the year". She appeared in the film The Sweet East directed by Sean Price Williams, which premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival at the Directors' Fortnight.

Edebiri hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Jennifer Lopez in 2024. In a sketch Edebiri indirectly acknowledged having criticized Lopez previously on the podcast Scam Goddess. She voiced Envy in the Pixar film Inside Out 2 (2024), a sequel to the first film.

Edebiri will next star in the A24 horror film Opus, co-starring John Malkovich. She will also play a supporting role in James L. Brooks's comedy film Ella McCay.