Karen Pittman Is Here to Make Her Mark On- and Off-Screen
- - Karen Pittman Is Here to Make Her Mark On- and Off-Screen
Nadia SulemanJanuary 27, 2026 at 8:02 AM
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Credit - Sarah Krick
For Karen Pittman, opportunities often feel fated. It’s as if the roles she takes on are meant specifically for her to play, from the devoted matriarch Dawn Edwards in Netflix’s Forever to the lovelorn academic Dr. Nya Wallace in And Just Like That… She finds a lesson in each woman’s story: “Every character heals me in some kind of way.”
Pittman did not always envision a life as an actor. Born in Mississippi and raised in Tennessee, she had to overcome doubts about her artistic potential at an early age. “Growing up in Nashville, you very much hear, ‘Well, that's not what little Black girls do.’” She remained undeterred from her passion, earning a degree in voice and opera from Northwestern University, followed by an MFA from New York University’s renowned Grad Acting Program.
In Pittman’s role as Mia Jordan on the Apple TV drama The Morning Show, which has been renewed for a fifth season, she’s an ambitious senior producer who steers a buzzing broadcast newsroom while staying calm and upholding ethics in the face of perpetual crises. In 2024, Pittman earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, cementing her reputation as a scene-stealer within an ensemble cast that includes megastars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.
Pittman is drawn to characters that display the nuances of Black womanhood. “For a long time, I thought, I want to play all women—I don't want to be kept to play just Black characters,” she says. “But now I feel very strongly that it's important for people to gaze on Black women, Black female characters, and see how we imagine the world. Now more than ever, I take great pride in being an African American actress.”
Still, she emphasizes the importance of recognizing the limits of representation. “What Donald Glover does, or what I do, or what Tracy Ellis Ross or Daniel Kaluuya does, represents the diaspora of what Black people look like—but it doesn't represent entirely how we all think,” Pittman says. “Representation isn't monolithic.”
Recently, Pittman stepped forward to share a part of her personal history in an act of representation that goes beyond her work as an actor. In November 2025, millions of Americans temporarily lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits amid a government shutdown. To Pittman, a member of the Feeding America Entertainment Council and someone who had experienced food insecurity as a single mother in New York City, the news felt personal. She decided to use her platform to “disrupt in a positive way.” She spoke in the media about how the suspension of SNAP benefits would be disastrous for many Americans, placing them in a precarious situation leading up to the holiday season. Children, in particular, are vulnerable to the threat of hunger: one in every five children in the U.S. faces food insecurity, and this issue disproportionately persists in communities of color, with Black and Latino kids being nearly twice as likely not to have enough food to eat, according to Feeding America.
Pittman, who was raised to value volunteering and giving back to her community, felt a “moral responsibility” to share her own story as an example and to highlight the work that Feeding America does for food banks and pantries. She wanted to make a point: it’s easy to assume that food insecurity isn’t impacting the people around you, but if you look at the statistics, it probably is. “I thought there are probably going to be a lot of women who look like me dealing with the fears and anxieties and worries,” she says. “Part of the identity of an artist is to create spaces where there is common ground.”
Write to Nadia Suleman at nadia.suleman@time.com.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
