Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer plays the recurring role of Melinda Danport in National Geographic’s The Hot Zone.
Melinda Danport is an aid worker in Zaire in the ’70s. She later marries CDC official Trevor Rhodes (James D’Arcy), who she met in Zaire in 1976.
In 1976, Trevor Rhodes was working in Zaire with Dr. Wade Carter (Liam Cunningham) to track the source and cause of the outbreak of Ebola in the central African country.
Together with Dr. Carter, Melinda and Trevor Rhodes search for infected people in the remote rural jungle areas of Zaire and try to help them. The search eventually leads to a rural clinic run by nuns, where unsterilized needles were being used to administer vitamins to pregnant women.
Who is Grace Gummer?
Grace Gummer was born on May 9, 1986, to actress Meryl Streep and Don Gummer, a sculptor.
Although she was born in New York City, she grew up in Connecticut and Los Angeles. She has an older brother Henry Wolfe Gummer, a musician, and an older sister Mamie Gummer. Her younger sister is Louisa Gummer, a model.
Grace Gummer’s earliest screen appearance was in The House of Spirits (1993) alongside her mother, Meryl. Meryl Streep played Clara del Valle in the film while Grace played the younger version of the same character.
Grace graduated with a degree in Art History and Italian from Vassar College, the same college that Meryl Streep attended. She made her debut onstage in 2008 in Lukas Bärfuss’ The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents.
She appeared in a starring role as Anna Moore in Gigantic, a comedy-drama series which aired on TeenNick from 2010 to 2011. She played Nat Collins in the film Meskada (2010), Abby in Bashert (2010), and Natalie Calimeris in Larry Crowne (2011).
She also appeared as Jen in Beast of Burden (2018), alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus in the Matrix trilogy).
She made her Broadway debut in 2011, appearing as Chloe Coverly in the Tom Stoppard’s revival of Arcadia and appeared as Katie Rand in NBC’s Smash Season 1, Episode 8, titled The Coup (March 2012).
Her TV credits also include recurring roles as Paige Willis in Zero Hour (2013), Hallie Shea in HBO’s The Newsroom (2013), and Penny in American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014-2015).
She starred alongside Halle Berry as Julie Gelineau in the CBS’s Extant (2014-2015) and appeared in the regular role of FBI field agent Dominique “Dom” DiPierro in the USA Network’s Mr. Robot (2015).