The breakout success actress Ambyr Michelle enjoys as strong-willed Eva Thomas on the hit CBS soap opera “Beyond the Gates” fulfills a dream she grew up with in Omaha.
Standing in front of the mirror reenacting what she saw on screen, writing stories from her own imagination, moving her body expressively at church or in dance battles – her heart told her she was destined to perform on big stages.
That destiny has come true now that she’s a regular on the network drama about the fictional Dupree family. The series just wrapped season one and has been renewed. The inaugural entry of a CBS Studios and NAACP partnership features a large ensemble cast, anchored by veterans Tamara Tunie and Clifton Davis as the high achieving clan’s matriarch and patriarch.
“I’m extremely blessed to be in this project with them,” said Michelle, recipient of a Daytime Star to Watch nod from TVLine. “We’re part of history as the first predominantly African American cast one-hour drama in a long time on network TV. I’m grateful so many people are relating to my character. Fans reach out to me on a daily basis pouring out love for what I’m doing with her, inside her, and through her. It’s a surreal experience.”
She appreciates the complexities of Eva, who’s determined to right old wrongs as the illegitimate daughter of a prominent Dupree.
“She’s a young woman just trying to find her way in two worlds,” Michelle said. “One world she’s very familiar with and wants to exit is poverty. Another world she thought she would never be able to enter is the wealthy world of the Duprees.”
Aspects of Michelle’s own life help her identify with Eva.
“Growing up, my father was in and out of my life,” she recalled. “He was there, but he had issues he had to deal with on his own. That created a spirit of rejection and abandonment. I believe Eva has grown up seeking connection until she finds out it was all a lie. I relate to her not knowing where she belongs … and not being someone’s first choice. That’s why I’m able to bring the emotional side out on screen.”
“Beyond the Gates” executive producer Sheila Ducksworth, president of CBS Studios/NAACP Venture, echoes what many say about the new star.
“Ambyr brings a freshness and authenticity that cannot be denied. I vividly recall meeting Ambyr in person for the first time,” Ducksworth said. “We were in the office of one of our executive producers and we both broke down the role of Eva and how the character would fit into the tapestry of the show. Ambyr embraced the character so masterfully and with such relatability, it’s truly no wonder our viewers respond to her and resonate with her.”
For a long time Michelle figured dance, her first passion, would be her Hollywood calling card. Though she’s taken some formal lessons she’s a largely self-taught creative.
The bold artist has written and starred in a gritty short film, “Right Where You Need to Be,” and wrote-directed-starred in another edgy short, “The Little Girl Inside.” Both generated festival buzz. She also wrote-directed-produced a feature, “Little Reminders.” All are on streaming platforms. She’s sold a pilot she wrote, directed, and co-starred in. She co-wrote scripts for its anticipated series run. Now she’s penning a new original series and looking for the right partners for a major feature film she’s developing.
Prior to getting Eva and her performance generating Emmy buzz, Michelle made her mark on the small screen with “Snowfall,” “Black AF” and “Insecure,” and the feature “A New Life.” She co-stars as Sienna in the upcoming limited series “The Runarounds.”
She participated in a “Beyond the Gates” panel at the recent NAACP national convention.
“The fact we are predominantly an African American cast and they invited me and my TV mom played by Trisha Mann-Grant to talk on a panel was mind blowing,” Michelle said. “As a young woman from Omaha, Nebraska, sometimes you can dream so big but that’s kind of where it stops. But my dream has come true through this show and the way people have responded to it. It was a beautiful experience for fans to come out and support us like that.”
She’s grateful Ducksworth has taken her under her wing.
“I would definitely consider her a mentor. I’ve called her before and asked her questions about what she thought about ideas and opportunities. She’s given me beautiful feedback. Her phone is always open to me to be able to reach out to her, which is such a gift.”
Coming of age, Michelle said she “gravitated to powerful Black women in TV and film” – Angela Bassett, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Regina King.
“They were just so powerful with their expressions and their acting and career choices. I studied them,” she said.
Omaha’s produced Black players in the entertainment space (Cathy Hughes, Gabrielle Union, Yolonda Ross, Amber Ruffin, Monty Ross, John Beasley, Michael Beasley, Randy Goodwin, Kevyn Morrow) but she was not focused on hometown heroes.
“My imagination was so grand and I didn’t know where to place it,” Michelle said. “I didn’t know I could do something beyond acting and dancing in school and actually make this a career. I think what set it off was watching the film ‘Honey’ with Jessica Alba. I was a dancer at the time and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a dancer who’s also acting in a movie,’ so I can do that, too. That’s what sparked it.”
Another influence is the strong, assertive, high achieving women in her family. Maternal grandmother Janis Berry has multiple degrees, worked as a YMCA executive, serves on several boards and co-founded the Stone Soul Picnic. Aunt Pamela Jo Berry is a photographer, poet, mixed media artist, and community advocate. Aunt Cheryl Berry Neal is a national voting rights activist and documentary film executive producer. Her creative cousins include actress Cathy Melton, architect and jewelry designer Nicole Goode, and playwright Beaufield Berry, whose drama “In the Upper Room” depicts facets of the Berrys from the 1970s. Michelle acted in its Denver and L.A. readings. The experience proved eye-opening.
“I learned a lot about our family. I learned a lot about my creativity,” Michelle said. “I learned what it means to reenact a story through true events and how accurate you have to be even though you didn’t live it and may not be able to speak with someone who lived it. But you feel their emotions throughout the script and you make it your duty to bring it on stage or on screen.
“I learned what my grandmother went through and what her people in her family went through. I learned about my grandfather (John Berry) who passed away when I was very young. I remember him very vaguely. Just to be in the atmosphere and the room with his words on the page made it breathtaking. Beaufield did an amazing job with that project.”
“I was so fearless when I was young,” she recalled. “I had this drive to see more of the world and was going to do whatever it took to see it. We took ourselves to Memphis, Kansas City, Arizona. We went so many places and won first place every single time.”
The former Ambyr McWilliams displayed the ambition and confidence that would help her navigate the industry when she founded a competition hip-hop dance troupe, Take Control, while an Omaha North High student.
They traveled surreptitiously in the summer, even the school year, under the cover of doing sleepovers.
“We would tell our parents we were spending the night over each other’s houses,” Michelle said. “All of our moms trusted us. An older cousin of one of the girls in the group would drive us to places to perform. Sometimes we spent the whole weekend ‘at our friends house’ when we were actually on the road. We’d come back like nothing ever happened, either back to our regular summer routine or back to school. It was so fun.”
Thankfully, nothing amiss gave them away or got them in trouble.
“We were covered every single time,” Michelle said. “Nothing happened on the way there, on the way back. It went extremely smooth.”
The experience of sampling a bigger life bolstered her desire to see and do more.
“That’s when I knew there was a life beyond Omaha,” Michelle said. “I knew I wanted to leave but I didn’t know where, how to settle somewhere new, how to get an agent, how to break into the industry. If no one’s guiding you it’s really hard. When I finally went to L.A. I had to just figure it out like everybody else.”
As she told Shoutout LA, “It’s definitely not easy but when I have a passion for something, I just keep going because it’s important to me to finish what I start.”
A strong faith is the bedrock of that drive.
“I didn’t want to get so scared I wouldn’t go after it. I was like, ‘I don’t care how long it takes I just know it’s going to happen.’ And the journey is the thing,” she said. “People get scared of the journey. They think, ‘I have to get to a destination,’ but your there is right now. You don’t know if you have tomorrow but you have today and what can you do to go after those dreams. If fear is stopping you then you’re never going to see everything God has for you.”
Those close to her have had her back the whole way.
“No one put me down or said don’t go after it,” Michelle said. “They were more so, I think intrigued, by the fact that I wanted to go after it. I felt nothing but love and joy and good blessings from my family, which I’m extremely grateful for.”
Before leaving for the L.A. dream she studied dance at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“I fast-tracked all my classes just so I could go to L.A. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving until I got accepted into a University of Nevada-Las Vegas performing arts program,” Michelle said. “Then I finally went to L.A., where I fell out of love with dancing. I don’t know what happened, but it led me on my path to acting.”
She was taking classes in an acting studio when she landed a part in the play “Diamonds in the Rough” by T’ana Phelice at the Willie Agee Playhouse. The late filmmaker John Singleton (“Boyz in the Hood”) came to a performance and Micheelle met him.
That meet proved fortuitous when an actor from his series “Snowfall” got her an invite to the block party kicking off its second season.
“I said, ‘I’m going to be on this show’ and I was able to get on it.” Her portrayal of Eureka, a vixen the show’s crime family used as bait for murders, generated heat.
Nothing good happens by chance in Michelle’s mind. She believes it’s all part of God’s “assignment.”
“I like to believe I’m favored, that if I continue to put Him first in everything I do I will continue to succeed and I can go further and faster with Him,” Michelle said. “I do need to be cautious about whose voice I let in my ear. His voice needs to be the loudest. When I finally surrendered my dream and my career to Him I got booked on the show (Beyond the Gates).”
It took faith to persevere and believe given how her arrival in L.A. was soon followed by COVID-19 and writer’s strike shutdowns. She grew frustrated with her talent agency at the time.
“They didn’t really push for me like I wanted them to push for me.”
She waited tables to pay the bills. Unable to book the acting gigs she wanted, she took matters into her own hands by writing-directing three indie films, twice giving herself starring roles. “Right Where You Need to Be” was originally scripted for a man to play the lead, but on her acting coach’s advice she reimagined the protagonist as a woman for herself to play.
“I locked myself in a room for three days and said, ‘You’re not coming out until you finish it.’”
Other cast members were comprised of acting class colleagues. The experience gave her the confidence to tackle her feature.
“We were in COVID when we shot ‘Little Reminders.’”
Its story about the homeless was made almost entirely on the streets, guerrilla-style, without permits. To research it she and her then creative partner went to L.A.’s skid row and interviewed homeless individuals about what brought them to living on sidewalks, in alleys, under overpasses.
She followed it with the short “The Little Girl Inside.”
DIY filmmaking became her ticket to showcasing her craft. She told Shoutout, “I learned to not wait on others, and to create my own lane, because that’s when doors would open for me. I want the world to know that I am here to build a legacy.”
A recent social media post she made headlined, “To every artist trust your instincts,” reinforced that sentiment. The post highlighted an unscripted moment between her and Trisha Mann-Grant from BTG that elicited a big fan reaction.
“It’s very intense,” Michelle said of the exchange that ends with the mom shattering the daughter’s illusions by forcing into her hands a box with her belongings. “If Trisha didn’t take the lead by picking up the box and shoving it to me and if I just stood there, looking at the director like, ‘Uh, what do we do, this isn’t in the script?’ – we would have missed a whole moment that moved so many people. So we just kept going, to the point the director adjusted to us with the camera and followed me outside the door because he knew it was authentic and passionate and powerful. Afterwards he came up to us in tears thanking us for doing that.
“I just wanted everybody to know it’s okay to bypass the rules and do what you feel as an artist is your truth.”
She knows first-hand the industry can cause artists to doubt themselves, which is why she offered a counter message of resilience and hope.
“There’s a sense of desperation when you haven’t made it in a very long time,” Michelle said. “So you start to do what you think the casting director or the director wants you to do. That is really not storytelling, that’s manipulation. I really wanted artists to know that when you feel moved in a scene and you feel that pull to go in a certain direction, the rules go away, there are no rules, the only rule in acting and storytelling is to tell the truth. The truth is subjective. Forget what you’ve been taught to do or appeasing someone else. If you feel in that moment that your heart is telling you what the truth is then go with that. Trust your instincts.”
She said once actors book a gig they need to know they bring something no one else can – themselves.
“They cast you for a reason,” she said, “It’s a collaboration at the end of the day.”
As a writer-director, she’s found that being open to actors’ interpretations can elevate a scene. It’s all about being in service to the story.
Lessons come with experience and a key one she learned recently is to make herself heard.
“I do need to use my voice in this industry,” Michelle said. “Especially as a young woman creative, I’m going to have to speak up in different settings. I have a right to use my voice as a creative because I’m showing up and bringing myself and I’m just as important as anyone else in the room.”
Ducksworth appreciates what the actress brings behind the scenes.
“Ambyr is a team player. She makes it her business to be knowledgeable about the show and to treat all with generosity and grace,” she said.
Atlanta, where BTG shoots, is home for now. The actress lives there with her aunt Cheryl and her husband Rodney and their daughter Chloe. She doesn’t get much time to explore Atlanta off-camera due to the show’s heavy shooting schedule, other gigs she travels to, writing projects and spending time with family, which she makes a priority. But she plans to explore more of the city moving forward.
In August she made it back for the biennial Native Omaha Days homecoming.
“It was a beautiful time,” Michelle said. “I feel like I got closer to all the family.”
While out and about she got recognized.
“Oh my God, it was crazy,” she said. “I took probably about 1,000 selfies. I’m so glad my mom got to experience that.”
At least one of her own projects is set in Omaha, and she’s intentional about making it there. She’d like nothing more than to tap its robust talent pool to give fellow creatives a chance to live out their own dreams.
Ducksworth has no doubt much more is in store for and from the actress.
“Truly the sky is the limit for Ambyr and I’m excited for the world to be witness to it.”