Erica Ash, who spent two seasons on the Fox sketch comedy present Mad TV and likewise stood out on the BET actuality spoof Actual Husbands of Hollywood and the Starz comedy-drama Survivor’s Regret, has died. She was 46.
Ash died Sunday in Los Angeles after a protracted battle with most cancers, her publicist Elizabeth A lot advised The Hollywood Reporter.
“Erica was an incredible girl and proficient entertainer who touched numerous lives along with her sharp wit, humor and real zest for all times,” her household stated in an announcement. “Her reminiscence will dwell eternally in our hearts.”
She additionally starred because the fierce public defender Gwen Sullivan on the 2018 BET drama In Contempt.
Ash first made an impression by starring on the primary two seasons (2006-08) of Brand’s The Huge Homosexual Sketch Present, produced by Rosie O’Donnell, and she or he appeared on the massive display in movies together with Scary Film V (2013), Uncle Drew (2018), The Huge Bend (2021) and Violet (2021).
Ash performed Mary Charles (“M-Chuck”) Calloway, half-sister of Jessie T. Usher’s professional basketball participant Cam Calloway, on all 4 seasons (2014-17) of Survivor’s Regret. The sequence was produced by LeBron James at his Spring Hill Productions.
As Bridgette Hart, she made life extraordinarily troublesome for her ex-husband Kevin Hart on Actual Husbands of Hollywood, which ran for 5 seasons, from 2013-16.
Erica Chantal Ash was born in Florida on Sept. 19, 1977, and raised in Atlanta, the place she attended Emory College to check drugs. She took a break and went to Japan, the place she “fell right into a background singing gig my first week there” and did some modeling, she advised the Los Angeles Occasions in 2017.
“Then my modeling crew was doing a present for the royal household of Japan at this resort and the ringside announcer thought I ought to ringside announce. Actually, one factor led to a different, so I inform individuals I’m the Forrest Gump of my area. I simply blindly, by religion, walked by way of life and stated ‘sure’ to issues that had been offered to me, and it led me right here.”
She labored on Broadway in 2011 in Child It’s You!, the jukebox musical from Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott that featured music from The Shirelles and different acts signed to Scepter Data.
Her résumé additionally included episodes of Chilly Case, Shades of Blue, A Black Girl Sketch Present and Household Reunion and the movies Kristy (2014), Jean of the Joneses (2016) and The Outlaw Johnny Black (2023).
On Instagram, her good friend and fellow comic Loni Love famous how Ash “would put her all into her work.”
Donations in her reminiscence will be made to the Susan G. Komen Most cancers Basis or the Nationwide Breast Most cancers Basis. Survivors embody her mom, Diann, and her sister, Adrienne.
Ash “was an actress whose vary and expertise had been actually limitless,” Rel Dowdell, director of movie research at Hampton College, famous. “Her canvas of labor admirably and notably coated all genres, and with each efficiency, she left a first-class impression on the viewer.”