Jackée Harry

Jackée Harry was married to arranger and conductor Jerry Jemmott from 1980 to 1984. She married Elgin Charles Williams in 1996, and they divorced in 2003.

During her marriage to Williams, Harry and Williams adopted a son, Frank, in 1997.

Harry was raised in Harlem, New York, by her mother, Flossie, after moving there from Winston-Salem. Her mother was Afro-Trinidadian, and her father was African American. At 14, Harry played the King in her school's production of The King and I.

She studied at New York City's High School of Performing Arts and later earned a bachelor's degree in education from Long Island University. Before pursuing acting, she taught American history at Brooklyn Technical High School for two years. She also studied acting at the Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Harry made her professional acting debut in the 1973 play Goin' Through Changes and made her Broadway debut in A Broadway Musical. Her first television role came in 1983, when she played Lily Mason on the daytime soap opera Another World, opposite Morgan Freeman.

Her breakthrough came in 1985 with the role of Sandra Clark on 227. The character's popularity led NBC producers to develop a pilot titled Jackée, although it did not become a series. Harry later starred opposite Oprah Winfrey in The Women of Brewster Place and played Ruth “CoCo” Royal on The Royal Family, alongside Della Reese and Redd Foxx.

From 1994 to 1999, Harry played Lisa Landry, the adoptive mother of Tia and Tamera Mowry's characters, on Sister, Sister. She later had recurring roles on Everybody Hates Chris, Let's Stay Together, Girl Meets World, Baby Daddy and The Cool Kids. She also starred as Pauletta Birdsong on The First Family and JoAnn Payne on The Paynes.

Harry maintained a connection to theater throughout her television career. She played Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in 1994 and later appeared in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, The Vagina Monologues and the Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse. She also toured nationally in J.D. Lawrence's stage play The Cleanup Woman and fronted an Off-Broadway run of NEWSical: The Musical.

Her film credits include Moscow on the Hudson, The Cotton Club, Ladybugs, You Got Served, The Man in 3B and Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta. She received a Nollywood and African Film Critics Award nomination for The Man in 3B.

Harry joined Days of Our Lives as Paulina Price in 2021. Her later credits include Pose, The Paynes, A Family Reunion Christmas, The Neighborhood, Too Many Christmases, Everybody Still Hates Chris and voice roles in animated productions including Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Iron Man and His Awesome Friends.

Harry won the 1987 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for playing Sandra Clark on 227. She was the first African American actress to receive that award. The performance also brought her a Golden Globe nomination.

For her work as Lisa Landry on Sister, Sister, Harry won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1999 and 2000. She was also nominated for an Online Film & Television Association Award for her guest role as Jada on Pose.