Jharrel Jerome is an Afro-Dominican American actor born on October 9, 1997, in the Bronx, New York, where he was raised. He studied acting at Ithaca College, and while still a student there he was cast in his first professional role, the teenage Kevin in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, a film that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017.
In Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, Jerome portrayed Korey Wise, one of the five teenagers wrongfully convicted in the 1989 Central Park jogger case. He won the 2019 Emmy for lead actor in a limited series or movie and dedicated the award to the Exonerated Five, whose experiences the series dramatizes. The Television Academy has described him as the first Afro-Latino and Dominican actor to win an acting Emmy.
Discussing the award, Jerome expressed hope that his visibility would open space for Dominicans, Latinos and Afro-Latinos. He had also described Ithaca’s quieter setting as helpful while studying acting.
He has continued taking on demanding real-life material. In Unstoppable (2024), he played Anthony Robles, the Arizona State wrestler born without a right leg who won an NCAA championship, in a film directed by William Goldenberg. Jennifer Lopez joined the cast as Robles’s mother, and Robles himself appeared on set alongside the actors telling his story, a production the wrestler’s own university press covered closely.
