Nana Mensah

Nana Afiah Mensah is a Ghanaian-American actress, writer, and director. She is best known for her roles in television series such as The Diplomat, The Chair, 13 Reasons Why, An African City, New Amsterdam, and Bonding. She gained further recognition for writing, directing, and starring in the feature film Queen of Glory.

Mensah was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in the Farmington Valley region alongside her brother. Her parents emigrated from Ghana in the 1970s, and her father worked as a chemical engineer. She attended the Loomis Chaffee School, where her drama teacher, Brian Kosanovich, encouraged her to act professionally. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in French and sociology, she briefly worked in the legal field to satisfy her parents' wishes before moving to New York City in 2009. While pursuing acting, she supported herself through jobs in administration, retail, childcare, and restaurants, while training at the Actors Center, the Public Theater's Shakespeare Lab, and the LAByrinth Theater Company Master Class.

Mensah made her film debut in 2009's The Film You Did Not See, followed by roles in short films including Behold the Swelling Scene, Alternate Sides, and Daadi. In 2014, she was cast as Sade in Nicole Amarteifio's web series An African City, later returning for its second season. Her extensive stage work includes off-Broadway roles in The Bacchae, Mother Courage and Her Children, Inked Baby, A Question of Impeachment, and Nollywood Dreams. In 2016, she starred in the Obie Award-winning play I'll Never Love Again, and in 2017, she earned an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Man from Nebraska. She also co-starred in the 2020 film Farewell Amor.

Frustrated by a lack of non-stereotypical roles, Mensah created Queen of Glory, a film about a Ghanaian-American academic who inherits her late mother's Christian bookstore. Influenced by directors such as Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai, Lena Dunham, Kevin Smith, and the Duplass Brothers, she spent over seven years developing the project, which was funded through her personal savings, investors, and Kickstarter. Premiering at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, the film earned her Best New Narrative Director and a Special Jury Prize. It also received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature, won accolades at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival and from the California Film Institute, and was released by Film Movement in 2022.

Mensah's writing credits include staff positions on Random Acts of Flyness, The Power, and Bonding, as well as selling the drama pilot Imperium to AMC. In 2021, she starred as Professor Yasmin "Yaz" McKay in the Netflix comedy-drama The Chair. In 2023, she joined the recurring cast of Netflix's The Diplomat as Chief of Staff Billie Appiah and performed on Broadway in Jaja's African Hair Braiding. In 2024, she starred alongside Adrien Brody in The Fear of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse.