Biography
Natalie Graves Tucker was raised by her grandparents in Emporia, Virginia. Her grandmother, a retired school teacher, nurtured her creative spirit through piano where they played for local churches as a side hustle. She played the flute and the piccolo in the high school band. Her grandmother, along with other teachers, founded a ballet school that still exists today as the Emporia-Greensville Cultural Arts Association. Natalie took ballet, tap, jazz and baton for over ten years.
Natalie started at AARP as a social work intern and stayed there for 20 years. She focused on issues including long-term care, caregiving, health promotion, Drive to End Hunger, and Life Reimagined. Her final role was the Multicultural Marketing Manager for African American outreach through infotainment targeting fraternities and sororities and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). She worked with celebrities like Blair Underwood, Stephanie Mills, Kim Coles, and Donnie Simpson. She also collaborated with major television networks such as BET, TVOne, Centric, UPTV, Bounce TV and national media/creative agencies like Reach Media, Sanders Wingo, and Carol H Williams. However, in January 2016, she decided to leave this perfect six-figure career to focus on acting full time.
For eight years, Natalie performed acting and voiceovers as a side hustle. She started doing video news releases for AARP that turned into numerous training videos and voiceovers at the organization. She worked on professional Washington DC-area stages such as Studio Theatre, Theater Alliance, African Continuum Theatre, Folger Theatre, and 1st Stage. Her favorite productions include For Colored Girls, Passing Strange, Old Settler, and The Violet Hour. She can also be seen in videos for AARP, AETNA, FDIC, and the US Postal Service and commercials for Audible, Kubo & the Two Strings, Ocean City, and UMUC. Natalie made her film debut as a talk show host in the independent film Nocturnal Agony starring Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Vernee Watson, Deidra LaWan Starnes, and Hezekiah Walker.
She launched her own media outlet Blackstage DC to highlight multicultural actors and theatre with a connection to the greater Washington, DC area. In her spare time, (like she has any!) she's a Board Member for Story Pirates, a contributor/theatre writer for DC Refined and DC Metro Theatre Arts, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. a Disney cruise fanatic and a marathoner. She has a B.A. degree in Speech Communications from University of Maryland at College Park and a Master's degree in Social Work/Social Service Administration from Howard University. She is married to Melvin Tucker and they have two sons, Khalil and Mateo. She divides her time between New York and Maryland.
