Amber Patrice Riley has won accolades for her theater and TV performances. She first appeared as ‘Toby’ in failed pilot ‘St. Sass’ (2002).
Next, Riley appeared in the main role as ‘Mercedes Jones’ in hit musical comedy drama TV-series ‘Glee’ (2009-2015), for all 6 seasons except season 5 in which her role was a recurring one. She performed many solos for the series and earned a ‘Screen Actors Guild Award,’ and nominations for 3 ‘Teen Choice Awards,’ 3 ‘NAACP Image Awards’ and a “Grammy Award.’ She featured in various soundtrack albums of ‘Glee’ and also in ‘Glee: The 3D Concert Movie’ (2011), a documentary of ‘Glee’ cast’s performances during ‘Glee Live! In Concert!’ tour.
Riley participated as contestant (partnered with professional dancer Derek Hough) and won the season 17 of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (2013), thus becoming the first African-American woman to win the reality show.
Riley played ‘Jackie’ in TV-film ‘My One Christmas Wish’ (2015) and ‘Brenda’ in TV-film ‘Straight Outta Oz’ (2016). In the TV-special ‘The Wiz Live’ (2015) she was the good witch ‘Addaperle’ and also appeared in TV-series ‘The Simpsons’ (voice-role 2010), and ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ (2016). She was a guest judge on British reality TV music competition ‘Let it Shine’ (2017).
Riley played various roles in TV sketch comedy-show ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ (2019-2021), and was ‘Emcee’ in musical TV-special ‘The Little Mermaid Live!’ (2019). She starred as ‘Kalli’ in romantic-comedy film ‘Nobody’s Fool’ (2018), as ‘Elle’ in crime-thriller film ‘Infamous’ (2020), as ‘Kandi’ in TV-film ‘Christmas Déjà vu’ (2021) and as ‘Simone’ in TV thriller-film ‘Single Black Female’ (2022).
Riley also appeared in ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ (2020), and ‘Wicked in Concert’ (2021). She’ll be seen in the titular role in upcoming TV-series ‘Dream.’
