Marsai Martin

Marsai Martin (birthname: Caila Marsai Martin) is best known, and has been widely acclaimed, for her role as Diane in the hit comedy series, Black-ish (2014-2022), and began to build her career in features at age 12 with a supporting role in director-writer Cynthia Mort’s Nina Simone biopic, Nina (2016), starring Zoe Saldana (as Simone), David Oyelowo, and Mike Epps.

Martin scored another supporting role in the Althea Jones-directed indie comedy, Fun Mom Dinner (2017), starring Toni Collette, Molly Shannon, Bridget Everett, Katie Aselton, Adam Scott, and Paul Rudd, and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Marsai Martin’s first co-starring feature role was in the comedy, Little (2019), on which 14-year-old Martin was also an executive producer, with Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Tone Bell, Rachel Dratch, and Tracee Ellis Ross, and grossing nearly $50 million (over double its budget).

For the first of two animated features, Martin co-starred with Mckenna Grace in the voice cast of DreamWorks Animation’s Spirit Untamed (2021), including the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Julianne Moore, Walton Goggins, and Andre Braugher. Martin’s next movie with co-star Grace was PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023), the sequel to Martin’s first movie with the series based on the TV show, PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021)—both of which were directed and co-written by Cal Brunker, and produced by Nickelodeon/Paramount Pictures.

With the same two companies and in between these projects, Martin was a star-producer (with, among other producers, LeBron James) of the sports family comedy, Fantasy Football (2022), released on Paramount +.