Wyatt Cenac

Wyatt John Foster Cenac Jr. ( ; born April 19, 1976) is an American comedian, actor, producer, and writer. He was a correspondent and writer for The Daily Show from 2008 to 2012. He starred in the TBS series People of Earth and in Barry Jenkins's first feature Medicine for Melancholy. He also hosted and produced the HBO series Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas. Early life Cenac was born in New York on April 19, 1976, at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan and spent his early years in the Bronx. His father, Wyatt Cenac Sr., was a cab driver born in Saint Mark Parish, Grenada in 1944. When Cenac was five, his father was shot and killed in his cab by a teenage passenger in Harlem. Cenac moved with his mother, a New York native, and Trinidadian stepfather to Dallas, Texas, in 1981. He spent his summers with his maternal grandmother in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in an apartment on President Street. While in elementary school, he became friends with comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan, who also introduced him to comic books. He graduated from the Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving to Los Angeles. As of October 2014, Cenac lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and previously lived in Prospect Heights during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Cenac is the nephew of the Hon. Mr. Justice Dunbar Cenac, Registry of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. His father was the cousin of former deputy prime minister of Grenada Bernard Coard, who was imprisoned for 25 years following the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983. Cenac's paternal thrice-great-grandfather Cherebin Cenac was an officer from Agen, France, on a French battleship during the Napoleonic Wars who settled in Soufrière, Saint Lucia. Cherebin's youngest child, Francis (1830–1892), later emigrated to Grenada.