Early life

Waithe was born in Chicago, Illinois. Though acting was not originally among Waithe's ambitions, she knew from the age of seven that she wanted to be a television writer, and received strong family support for her writing from her single mother and grandmother. She graduated from Evanston Township High School and from Columbia College Chicago in 2006, crediting faculty playwright Michael Fry for his teaching and encouragement.

Career

Waithe is a former writer for the Fox television series Bones, a writer for the 2012 Nickelodeon sitcom How to Rock, and a producer on the 2014 satirical comedy film Dear White People. Waithe wrote and appeared in the YouTube series "Twenties" which was produced by Flavor Unit Entertainment and optioned in 2014 by BET. In addition to writing and directing the short film "Save Me", which was shown at several independent film festivals, Waithe wrote the 2013 web series "Hello Cupid" and the 2011 viral video Shit Black Girls Say.

Waithe had earlier worked on The Real World as an editorial assistant, and on the set of Girlfriends. She was the personal assistant to director Gina Prince-Bythewood during the production of The Secret Life of Bees; Prince-Bythewood became a friend and mentor. Waithe was also a writing assistant on the 2009 biopic Notorious, about the life and murder of Notorious B.I.G.

In 2014, Variety named Waithe as one of its "10 Comedians to Watch". In August 2015, Showtime network commissioned a pilot for an upcoming series, written by Waithe and produced by Common, which tells a young urban African-American man's coming-of-age story. Both Waithe and Common grew up on Chicago's South Side.

Waithe was cast in Master of None after meeting creator and lead actor Aziz Ansari who, with Alan Yang, had originally written Denise as a straight, white woman with the potential, according to Waithe, to evolve into one of the main character's love interests: "For some reason, Allison Jones thought about me for it, a black gay woman." Ansari and Yang rewrote the script to make the character more like Waithe: "All of us actors play heightened versions of ourselves." She said, "I don't know if we've seen a sly, harem pants-wearing, cool Topshop sweatshirt-wearing, snapback hat-rocking lesbian on TV." She also said, "I know how many women I see out in the world who are very much like myself. We exist. To me, the visibility of it was what was going to be so important and so exciting."

[ Source: Wikipedia ]