Ariana DeBose

CTL-E-5820 · Person · other · 1991–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07077 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5820.

Ariana DeBose, born in 1991 in North Carolina, is an American actress, singer and dancer of Afro-Latina heritage: her father is Afro–Puerto Rican and her mother is white. A competition dancer from childhood, she reached the Top 20 of So You Think You Can Dance in 2009, left college to turn professional, and made her Broadway debut in Bring It On: The Musical in 2011. Ensemble and featured work followed in Motown, Pippin and the original Broadway cast of Hamilton, in which she played the Bullet, before her Tony Award-nominated turn as Disco Donna in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (2018). Her screen breakthrough came as Anita in Steven Spielberg's film West Side Story (2021), the role for which Rita Moreno had won an Academy Award sixty years earlier. In March 2022 DeBose won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, alongside Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG Award honors, becoming the first Afro-Latina and the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar. She has since hosted the Tony Awards and worked across film and television, a career she framed in her acceptance speech with the musical's own promise: there is indeed a place for us.

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 8; 40-record packet). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Ariana DeBose entity in the live graph at 3,523 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5820 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 788 (Stage Actresses list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Afro-Latina stage and screen figure — diaspora scope (father Afro–Puerto Rican, per sourced biography and her own statements). Vital status: LIVING — active on screen and as a Tony Awards host through the mid-2020s. CONFLICTS CARRIED: only her birth year (1991) and state (North Carolina) are carried; one profile names Wilmington as birthplace while trade coverage says only North Carolina — the city is left UNRESOLVED and is not asserted. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (94th Academy Awards, March 2022, West Side Story) — the first Afro-Latina and first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar; she and Rita Moreno are the only pair to win Oscars for the same role in different films — Playbill, accessed 2026-10-16. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5820-ariana-debose.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings and performances)

Sources

• Playbill, "Ariana DeBose Wins Academy Award for West Side Story" (March 2022) — won Best Supporting Actress at the 94th Academy Awards as Anita; follows Rita Moreno's win in the same role; Tony nominee for Summer — https://playbill.com/article/ariana-debose-wins-academy-award-for-west-side-story-see-which-stage-favorites-won-big-at-the-94th-annual-oscars (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia-derived reporting via What to Watch, "Who is Ariana DeBose?" — born 1991 in North Carolina to an Afro–Puerto Rican father and a white mother; So You Think You Can Dance Top 20; Academy Award for West Side Story — https://www.whattowatch.com/features/who-is-ariana-debose-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-oscar-nominee (build store)
• TheWrap, "Ariana DeBose on West Side Story and Her Oscar Nomination" — North Carolina native; Broadway path through Motown, Pippin and the original Hamilton cast (the Bullet); Tony nomination for Summer (2018); Afro-Latina identity in her own words — https://www.thewrap.com/ariana-debose-west-side-story-interview/ (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5820 · Combined Graph record U-07077 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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