Biography
Sola Bamis is an actress, writer, and filmmaker committed to high-quality art-making across media platforms. Born in Miami, FL to Nigerian parents, Sola received her BA in Chemistry from the University of Miami and MFA in Acting from the California Institute of the Arts. She earned a SAG Award Nomination for Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble in a Drama Series for her work as Shirley on the final season of Mad Men, and played Afeni Shakur, mother of famed rapper, actor, and artist Tupac Shakur, in USA's Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. Other television credits include True Detective, Lethal Weapon, Perception, three seasons on Freeform's Stitchers, and more. She has also lent her voice talents to several video games, and radio and television commercials. Sola's theater credits include Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye, for which she received an NAACP Theatre Award nomination for Best Lead Actress (non-equity), Genevieve in the west coast premiere of "Office Hour" at South Coast Rep, Gail in the Robey Theatre Company's production of "The River Niger" (NAACP Theatre Award nomination for best ensemble-non equity), the Provost in "Measure for Measure", Ariel in "The Tempest", and the Lady in Red in "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf". She also worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, participated in A Guthrie Experience in Minneapolis, MN, and has had the honor of working with Fran Bennett on In The Blood, Laurie Carlos, and Ron Cephas Jones. Sola made her filmmaking debut with The Event, which she wrote, produced, and starred in. Shot in Nigeria, the short film is an experimental articulation of the beauty, pain, and uncertainty of Black love in the Black Lives Matter era. Her next short film Crocodile placed finalist and semifinalist in the 2018 Film Daily Screenwriting and Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competitions.
