Ciera Payton

Ciera Payton is an American actress, writer and singer from New Orleans who studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and earned a drama degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Her first feature role came in Flight of Fury (2007), playing a CIA agent opposite Steven Seagal while still in college, and she made her off-Broadway debut in 2009 as the lead of Savannah Black and Blue. After moving to Los Angeles she appeared in Torchwood, The Closer, and Spike Lee's Oldboy as Capri. Her television work also includes The Walking Dead, General Hospital, Graceland and NCIS, and she has starred in the BET soap opera The Oval. Her films include The Runner (2015), A Madea Family Funeral (2019), in which she played Sylvia, and the Lifetime biopic Wendy Williams: The Movie. In 2016 she received the Los Angeles Pioneer Woman Award for arts programs for at-risk youth.