Mariann Aalda

Long before there was Olivia Pope in Scandal or Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder, there was DiDi Bannister on the ABC soap opera Edge of Night. As played by Mariann Aalda in the early1980's, the smart and spirited young attorney became a prototype for the professional African-American female characters that began to proliferate on network TV, earning her accolades and image awards from the African-American community. Mariann caught the acting bug at the age of seven, playing the Blessed Virgin Mary in a Christmas play at Ascension Grammar School in Harvey, Illinois. To encourage her budding talent, an older cousin, Angela Cervantes, enrolled her in a kid's performing arts program at Roosevelt University in downtown Chicago...a generous gift for which she will forever be grateful. At Thornton Township High School, she included performing in plays, two dance teams and concert choir in her extracurricular activities. After graduating from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where she toured with the SIU Student Theater and performed with the Angel Flite dance troupe, she moved to New York City and continued her training with the renowned Negro Ensemble Company conservatory program where Laurence Fishburne and fellow Chicagoan Robert Townsend were classmates. From there, she made her Off-Broadway debut with the illustrious Woody King's New Federal Theater production of Take It from the Top with the legendary Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Continuing her theatrical career in Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and "way-the hell" Off-Broadway productions, she also joined NYC's Off-Center Theatre Company as a sketch comedy writer-performer and toured the country with The Proposition improvisational comedy troupe with Charlie Adler. When Edge of Night went off the air, she moved to Los Angeles where she was quickly cast in the HBO hit, First & 10, in the recurring role of Ellen Parker, the long-suffering coach's wife, playing opposite OJ Simpson for three seasons. From there, her sitcom career took off in numerous recurring and guest-starring roles, including memorable turns immortalized in syndication reruns opposite Meshach Taylor on Designing Women as his yuppie-from-hell girlfriend, Lita Ford, and Sherman Hemsley, as his ditzy stripper girlfriend, Lois Keller, on Family Matters. Other notable TV leading men include Ernie Hudson, Dennis Haysbert, Clifton Davis, Miguel Nunez, Haywood Nelson and of, course, Irving Allen Lee, her partner in the soap opera super-couple, "Calvin and DiDi." She was also a series regular on the CBS sitcom, The Royal Family, as Elizabeth Royal-Winston, the daughter of Redd Foxx and Della Reese, mom to Larenz Tate, Sylver Gregory and Naya Rivera, and the goody-goody sister to her troublemaking sibling played by Jackee Harry. Her return to daytime in the recurring role of the tragically disfigured Lena Hart, on the NBC soap Sunset Beach had her playing mom to Sherrie Saum. But just as she was, in her words, "getting good at this acting thing," Mariann's career stalled as she banged her head on the glass ceiling of ageism that befalls so many women in Hollywood. Meanwhile, her former leading men went on to star opposite younger leading ladies. Turning to hypnotherapy to help her through this midlife crisis, she ended up becoming a hypnotherapist, herself. Working with female clients suffering from midlife depression, it soon dawned on her that they had already been hypnotized. Like millions of other women, they were in the throes of the societal spell that women lose value and social and sexual currency with age. Mariann saw her job as snapping them out of that trance. Ironically, the positive suggestions she gave her clients took root in her own subconscious mind, compelling her to recommit herself to acting -- with a new mission of changing the paradigm on women and aging. Returning to her comedy roots and live performance, she began doing sketch, standup and performance art to put a bold, fresh, sexy, spin on older women. Heralded as a thought leader in the positive aging movement for helping to change the narrative on women and aging, she's been recognized by AARP as an Age Disruptor and is a prolific radio, TV, podcast guest and keynote speaker on shameless aging, with a TEDx Talk titled Ageism Is a Bully...Stand Up to It! She also co-produced and starred in the 25-episode web series, Talk To Me, Ginger!, based on her performance art character, Adult Sex-Ed Evangelist & Mojo Motivator, Dr. Ginger, who is also the protagonist of her solo show, Gettin' Old Is a Bitch...But I'm Gonna Wrestle That Bitch to the Ground!, which sold out shows in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and broke a 30-year box office record at the 2019 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. In 2021, she was invited to perform a virtual excerpt at the Silver Sirens Redefining Aging Summit in Sydney, Australia. In fulfilling her mission, she obviously was also filling an entertainment void. Although she'd previously had small roles in big studio films and featured roles in urban cult films, Mariann's new resolve also resulted in her first lead role in a motion picture after more than 40 years as an actress -- starring opposite Eric Roberts as media mogul Opal Banks in Spawns, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Subsequently, she was cast in two short, pro-age films for which she won acting awards on the festival circuit. Since 2022, she has played the inscrutable family matriarch, Violet Givens, the grandmother to Karrueche Tran and mom to Rhonda Ross on the Emmy-winning streaming soap, The Bay. Simultaneously, she continues to sharpen her comedy chops doing standup...in readiness for the greater opportunities in Hollywood's changing landscape where the older female audience is garnering new respect and gaining greater influence.