S. Epatha Merkerson Bio
Sharon Epatha Merkerson (born November 28, 1952), known professionally as S. Epatha Merkerson, is an American actress whose career has spanned stage and screen for nearly five decades. She is best known for her long-running portrayal of NYPD Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on the NBC police procedural drama series Law & Order, a role she played from 1993 to 2010 across 17 seasons. Merkerson has earned an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her work on the HBO film Lackawanna Blues, and she currently stars as Sharon Goodwin on the NBC medical drama Chicago Med.
Beyond her screen work, Merkerson is a respected stage performer with two Obie Awards, two Tony Award nominations, and a Helen Hayes Award to her credit. She has also been recognized for her advocacy in arts education and diabetes awareness.
Early Life and Background
S. Epatha Merkerson was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and raised in Detroit as the youngest of five children in a household led by her mother Ann, who worked for the post office. Her family background and upbringing in Detroit shaped her early interest in storytelling and the performing arts.
Merkerson has shared that her unusual middle name, Epatha, was the name of a grade-school teacher who was influential in keeping her father in school. She graduated from Cooley High School in 1970 and went on to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre from Wayne State University in 1976. In May 2009, Wayne State University recognized her accomplishments by awarding her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
Path to Acting
After completing her studies at Wayne State University, Merkerson continued her training at New York University, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts on a part-time basis. In 1978, she relocated to New York City to pursue a professional acting career, eventually becoming a familiar presence on the New York theater scene.
Her early stage work laid the foundation for the accolades that followed. Merkerson built her reputation with performances in plays such as Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill and Berniece in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning drama The Piano Lesson, the latter earning her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She also earned two Obie Awards for her work in I’m Not Stupid and Birdie Blue, along with a Helen Hayes Award for The Old Settler, demonstrating her versatility across theatrical genres before she became a household name on television.
S. Epatha Merkerson Career
Early Career (1976–1992)
S. Epatha Merkerson launched her professional career in the late 1970s with a mix of stage and television appearances. Her television debut came as Reba the Mail Lady on the children’s series Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a role that introduced her to a wide audience. She also made appearances on The Cosby Show and built a résumé of film credits that included Jacob’s Ladder, Loose Cannons, She’s Gotta Have It, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Navy SEALs.
During this formative period, Merkerson continued to develop her craft in regional and Off-Broadway theater. Her stage honors from this era, including Obie Awards and a Helen Hayes Award, established her as a serious dramatic actress with both range and depth.
Breakthrough (1993–2010)
S. Epatha Merkerson first appeared on Law & Order in the Season 1 episode titled Mushrooms as the grief-stricken mother of an 11-month-old boy. Her performance impressed the producers enough that, in the show’s fourth season, she was selected to replace Dann Florek as the detective squad chief, eventually becoming Lieutenant Anita Van Buren. Across 17 consecutive seasons, Merkerson appeared in 388 episodes, more than any other actor associated with the program.
Outside of Law & Order, Merkerson starred as Lola Delaney in the Los Angeles stage production of William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, which opened a successful run on Broadway in January 2008 and earned her a second Tony Award nomination. In 2005, she delivered a defining performance as the lead in the HBO film Lackawanna Blues, a role that won her an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2006. Merkerson departed Law & Order at the end of the show’s twentieth season, with her final episode airing on May 24, 2010.
Notable Works and Milestones
Beyond Law & Order, Merkerson played Lydia Hamilton Smith in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln, opposite Tommy Lee Jones as Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In 2012, she also became the host of Find Our Missing, a reality-reenactment series on TV One profiling missing people of color. Since 2015, she has starred as Sharon Goodwin, Chief of Patient and Medical Services, on NBC’s Chicago Med, a series created by Law & Order developer Dick Wolf, and has appeared in crossovers on Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D.
S. Epatha Merkerson Award Nominations
S. Epatha Merkerson has received two Tony Award nominations throughout her career, the first for her performance as Berniece in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, which earned her a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and the second for her role as Lola Delaney in the Broadway production of Come Back, Little Sheba. She has also been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for her work in the Suzan-Lori Parks play F**king A, and she has collected four NAACP Image Awards over the course of her career.
S. Epatha Merkerson Awards Won
In 2006, S. Epatha Merkerson won the trifecta of major television honors for her performance in the HBO film Lackawanna Blues. She took home a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie. Earlier in her career, she had earned two Obie Awards for distinguished Off-Broadway performances in I’m Not Stupid and Birdie Blue, as well as a Helen Hayes Award for her work in The Old Settler.
Personal Life
S. Epatha Merkerson appeared on Henry Louis Gates’ television series Finding Your Roots on February 5, 2019, in which she learned that she was a descendant of Isaac Hawkins and eight others among the 272 enslaved people sold in the 1838 Jesuit slave sale by Jesuit priests who owned tobacco plantations. The proceeds from that sale were used to pay off the debts of the Jesuit-operated Georgetown College, now known as Georgetown University.
In 2014, Merkerson became a spokesperson for Merck America’s Diabetes Challenge, an initiative aimed at increasing Type 2 diabetes awareness among African Americans. She has also been the recipient of honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, Montclair State University, and Wayne State University in recognition of her contributions to the arts.