Chipo Chung was born on 17 August 1977 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where her family had fled during the Rhodesian war, before the family settled in Harare. Her mother, Fay Chung, later became Zimbabwe's Minister of Education. Chung attended Dominican Convent High School in Harare and got her start acting with the local theatre company Over the Edge, before moving to the US to study directing at Yale and then training as an actor at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
She's best known to sci-fi fans as Chantho in Doctor Who, and has gone on to play Mary Magdalene in A.D. The Bible Continues, the Master in AMC's Into the Badlands, Xaphania in His Dark Materials, and Sandy in Apple TV+'s Silo, a role she's carried through all three seasons so far (a fourth and final season has already been filmed).
In between Silo seasons, Chung played Eleanor Bennett in Hulu's 2023 limited series Black Cake, adapted from Charmaine Wilkerson's novel, and joined the ensemble of Apple TV+'s sci-fi thriller Constellation in 2024 as Michaela Moyone. Off screen, she's kept up a long-running strand of advocacy work, co-founding SAFE, a Kenya-based theatre initiative used for HIV education, and Envision Zimbabwe, a women's peace-building trust, and she co-chaired UK trade union Equity's Independent Commission on Race Equality in 2020.
Sources
- Chipo Chung, Wikipedia
- Chipo Chung and Anthony Mark Barrow to join "Black Cake", What's on Disney Plus
- Meet the cast of Apple TV+'s Constellation, led by Noomi Rapace, Hello!
- Apple TV unveils trailer for third season of Silo, Apple TV Press
- Chipo Chung, From Child Refugee To Major Actor In Hollywood, theblkscript
