Tembi Locke

As an actor, I started my onscreen career with the iconic comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Today you can find me in roles on The Magicians, Proven Innocent, and NCIS: LA, to name a few or on the big screen in the upcoming feature film, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson (2019). I love my acting career, and at the center of my work on set, there is always a commitment to the story and the complexity of being human. 

My writing life took root at a very young age. In third grade, I wrote a short story about a girl with a magical blanket. My mom loved it, and, well, I was off to the races. I journaled, and I took writing classes for my own personal growth and expression. But when I lost my husband, Saro, after a long battle with cancer, the narrative of my life and all that writing began to feel like a memoir. Now, my first book, From Scratch, comes to bookstores in 2019. I couldn’t be more thrilled. You might say my advocacy work began with my parents. They always tried to encourage me to do my part in realizing a more just and humane world. Today, my advocacy is grounded in the very personal experience of caring for and losing someone I love. 

I advocate for better care for caregivers and families. I speak on loss, resilience, and connection when it matters most. I’ve given a TEDx talk and keynotes around the country and am an ambassador to organizations doing the vital work of changing our systems and society for the better. When I’m not writing or working on set, you’ll often find me in the kitchen cooking with my daughter. Home is the place we reconnect and catch up on movies and books. And we cook lots of Sicilian food inspired by my late husband and our home away from home, Sicily. Each summer, we travel there to power down, take long walks and eat a ridiculous amount of gelato seaside to the gorgeous Mediterranean. Because as one of my favorite Sicilian writers, Leonardo Sciascia, said, “all of Sicily is a dimension of the imagination.”