Samba Schutte

Samba Dirk-Jan Schutte is a Mauritanian-Dutch actor, writer, and comedian. He is widely recognized for his performance as Roach in the series Our Flag Means Death and for playing Hakim in Sunnyside, which marked the first appearance of an Ethiopian character in a United States television sitcom. Additionally, he joins the cast of the 2025 American science fiction series Pluribus.

Schutte was born in Nouakchott, Mauritania, to a Dutch Christian father and a Mauritanian Muslim mother. When he was two years old, his family relocated to Ethiopia due to his father's employment with a non-governmental organization. He attended the Sandford International School in Addis Ababa and developed an interest in performance at age 12 through the video game Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair. To pursue his passion, he moved to the Netherlands in 2001 to study theatre at the Utrecht School of the Arts.

His artistic career began in the Netherlands in 2004 as he started performing stand-up comedy in local venues. He subsequently became a member of the Comedy Explosion collective. In 2006, Schutte earned both the Audience and Jury Awards at the Leids Cabaret Festival, which launched a multi-year national tour. During this period, he also served as a presenter and writer for the Dutch adaptation of The Daily Show, known as De Nieuwste Show.

Schutte relocated to Los Angeles in 2011 under an O-1 visa for extraordinary ability. Upon arrival, he won a contest at The Comedy Store, becoming a regular act at the venue. He made his American film debut in the 2016 feature The Tiger Hunter. His television breakthrough occurred in 2019 when he was cast in the NBC sitcom Sunnyside as Hakim, an Ethiopian heart surgeon working as a taxi driver in New York City, drawing upon his personal background as an immigrant for the role.

Further prominence came with his role as the cook Roach in the HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death from 2022 to 2023. Alongside live-action performances, Schutte has built an extensive voice-acting portfolio. His voice credits include animated shows such as Monster High, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, and The Legend of Vox Machina, as well as the 2024 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. In 2025, he joined the Apple TV sci-fi project Pluribus, playing the character Koumba Diabaté.

On a personal level, Schutte speaks Amharic, Dutch, French, and English fluently. He lives with vitiligo, a condition affecting skin pigmentation, which he initially worried might hinder his professional prospects. He met his wife, who works as a film producer, after moving to Los Angeles.