Tala Ashe
Tala Ashe is an actor, born 1984.
Born Talayeh Ashrafi in Tehran and raised in Ohio, Ashe trained for the theatre at Boston University and later took improv training at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York. The stage is still where the serious work happens: she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2024. Screen has largely been the day job around it.
Television found her in supporting spots first, including Smash and the one-season conspiracy thriller American Odyssey, where she played Anna Stone. The part that gave her an audience was Zari on DC's Legends of Tomorrow. She joined as Zari Tomaz and, after the series rewrote its own timeline, carried on as Zari Tarazi, a different version of the same woman. That is an unusual assignment: one actress, one name, two nearly opposite comic registers, and the second version is by some distance the funnier one, because the show had stopped pretending to be a drama by then.
Since then she has stayed mostly in comedy, including Adults, with the film Little Brother still ahead of her. Her run on The Girls on the Bus is not among the credits listed here.
Movies (1)
TV (4)
Where to start with Tala Ashe
Only five credits sit on this page, so the routing is short. DC's Legends of Tomorrow is the one to watch, and specifically the later seasons rather than her first. The show had become an unapologetic farce by then, and she is very good in farce, playing a woman who takes herself immensely seriously inside a series that takes nothing seriously.
American Odyssey is the straight dramatic sample, a serialised thriller that never got a second year, and Smash is a footnote. Adults is the current comedy and Little Brother the film to come.
Her Tony-nominated stage work is not among the credits listed here, which does mean this page undersells her considerably.