Wanda Sykes Trivia | 50 facts about the actress

Wanda Sykes is an American actress and a stand-up comedian. She has made several appearances in film and TV.

Let’s find out some trivia and facts about the actress.

1. Her full name is Wanda Yvette Sykes
2. She born March 7, 1964
3. She is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and writer
4. She was first recognized for her work as a writer on The Chris Rock Show
5. For her work she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999
6. In 2004, Entertainment Weekly named Sykes as one of the 25 funniest people in America
7. She is also known for her roles on CBS’ The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–10), HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (2001–present), and ABC’s Black-ish (2015–present)
8. She currently stars in the Netflix original series The Upshaws
9. The series premiered on May 12, 2021, with Kim Fields and Mike Epps
10. She has appeared in the HBO Max comedy series The Other Two
11. As well as playing Allegra Durado, a new, powerful, and “messy”-brained partner in a legal firm on Paramount+’s acclaimed The Good Fight
12. Aside from her television appearances, Sykes has also had a career in film, appearing in Monster-in-Law (2005), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), Evan Almighty (2007) and License to Wed (2007)
13. As well as voicing characters in animated films such as Over the Hedge (2006), Barnyard (2006), Brother Bear 2 (2006), Rio (2011), Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) and UglyDolls (2019)
14. Wanda Sykes was born in Portsmouth, Virginia
15. Her family moved to Maryland when she was in third grade
16. Her mother, Marion Louise, worked as a banker
17. And her father, Harry Ellsworth Sykes, was a U.S. Army colonel employed at the Pentagon
18. She has an older brother, Harry
19. Sykes’s family history was researched for an episode of the 2012 PBS genealogy program Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr
20. Her ancestry was traced back to a 1683 court case involving her ancestor, Elizabeth Banks, a free white woman and indentured servant, who gave birth to a biracial child, Mary Banks, fathered by a slave, who inherited her mother’s free status
21. According to historian Ira Berlin, a specialist in the history of American slavery, the Sykes family history is “the only such case that I know of in which it is possible to trace a black family rooted in freedom from the late 17th century to the present”
22. Sykes attended Arundel High School in Gambrills, Maryland
23. She went on to graduate from Hampton University
24. There she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing
25. She became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha
26. After college, her first job was as a contracting specialist at the National Security Agency
27. There she worked for five years
28. Wanda Sykes was married to record producer Dave Hall from 1991 to 1998
29. In November 2008, she publicly came out as a lesbian while at a same-sex marriage rally in Las Vegas regarding Proposition 8
30. A month earlier, Sykes married her wife Alex Niedbalski, a French woman
31. They met in 2006
32. The couple also became parents in April 2009
33. Then Niedbalski gave birth to a pair of fraternal twins, a daughter and a son, named Olivia and Lucas
34. Sykes only came out to her conservative mother Marion and father Harry when she was 40
35. They both initially had difficulty accepting her homosexuality
36. They declined to attend her wedding with Alex
37. This led to a brief period of estrangement, they have since reconciled with Sykes
38. During a September 19, 2011, appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Sykes announced that she had been diagnosed earlier in the year with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)
39. Although DCIS is a non-invasive “stage zero breast cancer”, Sykes had elected to have a bilateral mastectomy in order to lower her chances of getting breast cancer
40. Sykes splits time between Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia and Cherry Grove, New York
41. Sykes publicly expressed being devastated when California voters passed state Proposition 8
42. She has continued to be active in same-sex marriage issues hosting events and emceeing fundraisers
43. She has also worked with PETA on promoting dog anti-chaining legislation in her home state
44. She has been an outspoken supporter of Detroit’s Ruth Ellis Center after the organization’s staff sent Sykes a letter asking her to visit during her 2010 tour’s stop in Detroit
45. Sykes has been nominated for ten Primetime Emmys
46. With one win (in 1999) for “Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special”
47. In 2001, she won the American Comedy Award for “Outstanding Female Stand Up Comic”
48. She won a Comedy Central Commie Award for “Funniest TV Actress in 2003”
49. In 2010 she won the GLAAD Stephen F. Kolzak Award
50. In 2015 she won the Activism in the Arts honor at the Triumph Awards