Ajiona Alexus

Ajiona Alexus is an American actress and singer who began performing as a child, reciting her first monologue at age 8 and starting her career in 2008 at 12. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, she trained at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where she studied theater arts. From 2012 to 2014 she appeared as a regular on the TV One series The Rickey Smiley Show, and she later took on the role of Teenage Cookie Lyon in Empire, Fox's musical drama, from 2016 to 2019. Her film work includes Something Like Summer (2017), Acrimony (2018), Family Blood (2018) and Breaking In (2018). On television she played Sheri Holland in 13 Reasons Why from 2017 to 2018, appeared in the Hulu thriller Light as a Feather in 2018, and took the lead in the first season of BMF, the Starz crime drama, in 2021. She also starred in the Lifetime movies Real Love and Strength of a Woman (2023).