Radha Blank
September 24, 1976
American
Actress, filmmaker, playwright, rapper, comedian
- Roger Blank (father)
Career[edit]
Early work[edit]
Blank began her career as a playwright, writing several plays that never made it to the stage; in an interview with The Guardian, Blank claimed to have "about 12 plays that haven't seen the light of day."[4] Her plays include HappyFlowerNail, Casket Sharp, nannyland and the critically acclaimed Seed. She is a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award recipient, an NEA New Play Development Award recipient and a NYFA Fellow. Though under-produced, Blank’s plays helped her secure writing jobs in television.[4] Seed[5] did make it to Off Broadway and received critical acclaim.[6] Seed opened in Harlem in 2011 and followed a social worker who upon approaching retirement becomes obsessed with the welfare of a child genius from the projects. Seed was a 2010 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts New Play Development Award.[7] The Huffington Post called Seed "fresh, lively...and poetic."[8] Early in her career, while working as a playwright, Blank wrote for the children's shows The Backyardigans and Little Bill as well as the popular children's shorts "Maya the Indian Princess" and “My Papa Is A Moco Jumbie” for Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.
In 2015, Blank wrote (along with Selema Masekela) and directed the comedic short Sam Bowe: Speech Writer which was featured on FunnyOrDie.com.
Around this time she invented her alter ego, rapper RadhaMUSprime and first performed a live show called The Forty-Year Old Version: A Mixtape where she used beats, rhymes and film to both channel the grief of losing her mother and her fears of approaching 40.[9] She invented the persona after she was fired from a screenwriting job several years ago. In an interview with Indiewire, she states that "I've been rhyming since I was about 10 years old." She also states that "I do feel like hip-hop as an art form, you kind of have permission to brag, to live in a place of bravado and just kind of speak the truth in ways that we wouldn't ordinarily do." She has also found work in the writer's rooms of the television series Empire and Spike Lee's series She's Gotta Have It.[10]
Personal life[edit]
Her father Roger Blank who died in October 2018, was a renowned jazz drummer.[22] Her mother, Carol Blank, with whom she shares a birthday, was a celebrated artist, teacher, and curator who died in October 2013,[23] and is referenced in The Forty-Year-Old Version.[24][25] Blank's brother Ravi is featured in The Forty-Year-Old Version as himself.[26]