Tati Gabrielle treats a cartoon voice role with the same seriousness as a lead in a prestige drama, and that range is a big part of why she keeps landing bigger parts. She has played a scheming teenage witch, a small town love interest with a dark secret, a swashbuckling mercenary, and now a hardened survivor in HBO’s post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us. With Mortal Kombat II putting her in front of an even bigger global audience, this look at her life goes past the highlight reel, into her mixed Korean and African American family background, the mental health and spiritual journey she has spoken about candidly in interviews, her advocacy work on and off screen, and how she built a career that keeps expanding in new directions.
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Real Name | Tatiana Gabrielle Hobson |
| Known As | Tati Gabrielle |
| Date of Birth | January 25, 1996 |
| Age | 30 (as of 2026) |
| Place of Birth | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | African American and Korean |
| Height | 5’7″ (1.70 m) |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years Active | 2014 to present |
| Education | Oakland School for the Arts, Spelman College |
| Relationship Status | Not publicly disclosed |
| Children | None publicly known |
| Net Worth | Estimated $2 million to $4 million (2026) |
Biography
Tati Gabrielle was born Tatiana Gabrielle Hobson on January 25, 1996, in San Francisco, California, making her 30 years old as of 2026. She is one of three children born to Terry Hobson and Traci Hewitt Hobson, the only daughter alongside two older brothers whose names have not been made public. Her father is African American, while her mother was born in Korea to a Korean woman and an African American soldier. At age four, her mother was adopted by an African American military family stationed in Japan, which is why Gabrielle often describes her heritage as both Korean and African American on her mother’s side.
Gabrielle started performing early, landing the lead role of Lemony Snicket in a third-grade production of A Series of Unfortunate Events. She later auditioned for the Oakland School for the Arts and was accepted into its theatre program, where she performed in and directed several productions and picked up awards at festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Two of her classmates at OSA went on to become famous performers in their own right: singer Kehlani and Euphoria star Zendaya. Speaking on The Jennifer Hudson Show, Gabrielle said she and Kehlani have stayed close for more than a decade since those school days, calling her “my oldest, oldest friend.” She also modeled as a child for retailers like Macy’s and Nordstrom. Gabrielle graduated from Oakland School for the Arts with a 3.7 GPA before moving to Atlanta to attend Spelman College, where she majored in drama and French.
Career
Gabrielle’s first screen credit came under her birth name, Tatiana Hobson, in the 2014 short film To Stay the Sword. She moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and picked up small television roles, including a 2016 guest spot on Disney Channel’s K.C. Undercover and an episode of Nickelodeon’s The Thundermans. Her first credit billed as Tati Gabrielle came that same year.
In 2017, she landed a recurring role as Gaia on The CW’s The 100 and voiced Addie in The Emoji Movie, her first major film role. The real breakthrough arrived in 2018, when she was cast as Prudence Blackwood, leader of the Weird Sisters, on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The role introduced her to a global fanbase and opened the door to bigger projects.
Gabrielle joined the cast of Netflix’s psychological thriller You in 2020 as Marienne Bellamy, a role she reprised through the show’s fourth and fifth seasons. Speaking on The Jennifer Hudson Show about the character, Gabrielle said she pushed the show’s writers to avoid tired tropes around Black characters in genre television, describing herself as a mixed-race Black woman who wanted Marienne written with the awareness and resilience she feels are true to that experience. In a separate interview with Pop Culturalist, she said she asked to learn each new season’s story episode by episode rather than all at once, so she could react to the twists the way a viewer would, and that she built out small details of Marienne’s inner life, like the phrases she might have picked up in rehab or how often she thinks about her daughter Juliet, to keep the character feeling real scene to scene. Speaking with Glamour UK about filming her first on-camera intimacy scenes opposite Penn Badgley, Gabrielle said working with an intimacy coordinator to set clear physical boundaries beforehand, along with Badgley walking her through the process as a first-timer, made an initially nerve-wracking experience feel manageable.
She also voiced Willow Park on Disney’s animated series The Owl House from 2020 to 2023. Gabrielle has said she wanted to be an animator before she wanted to be an actor and describes herself as a lifelong cartoon fan, which made the role a personal milestone. Speaking at Comic Con Cape Town, she praised the show’s portrayal of LGBTQ+ and questioning kids as meaningful representation for young viewers. In 2021, she also took on a voice role in the scripted iHeartRadio podcast Aftershock, playing a teenager named McKayla alongside David Harbour and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The project was created, written, and directed by actress Sarah Wayne Callies, whom Gabrielle has called a mentor and credits with inspiring her own interest in directing and producing.
In 2022, she starred opposite Tom Holland as the villain Jo Braddock in Uncharted. She had not played the Uncharted games before joining the film, but once she saw the size of the fandom, she played through the first and fourth games to understand the world, since her character does not appear in the games and she wanted to do right by longtime fans. Speaking with Glamour UK, Gabrielle said Holland’s girlfriend Zendaya, her middle and early high school classmate, sent her words of encouragement through Holland during filming after he told her Gabrielle was doing great on set. The following year she took on the lead role of Hannah Kim in the Netflix heist series Kaleidoscope and voiced Kai Li Cain in Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham.
May 2023 brought one of her biggest roles yet, playing the assassin Jade in Mortal Kombat II. In a 2026 interview, Gabrielle said Jade was her favorite character in the Mortal Kombat games growing up and that she would welcome the chance to play her again in future films. That same period saw her cast as Nora on HBO’s The Last of Us, a role that grew from a recurring part in season two to a series regular position for season three, confirmed in March 2026. She has also lent her voice to Naughty Dog’s upcoming video game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, playing lead character Jordan A. Mun, and voices Dana in the upcoming animated series Bass X Machina. Along the way, Gabrielle has picked up a spot on Forbes’ Hollywood 30 Under 30 list, a CAPE Rising Star Award, and a nomination at the 2024 Black Reels Awards.
Advocacy and Beliefs
Gabrielle has been vocal about LGBTQ+ representation in Hollywood without publicly disclosing her own sexual orientation. She has appeared at PFLAG’s anniversary gala as a presenter and has spoken in interviews about wanting film and television to represent non-binary and transgender audiences more fully, comments that have occasionally been mistaken online for a personal coming out rather than advocacy. As far as public record shows, she has not confirmed or denied any particular label for herself, and has said her focus stays on her career and her craft.
Gabrielle has also been outspoken about representation behind the audition room, not just on screen. Speaking with Glamour UK, she said that early in her career she would regularly audition for roles listed as open to all ethnicities, only to see the part go to a white actress once the project came out, which told her the casting call was not as open as advertised. She said she has since seen the industry shift toward more actively seeking out projects built around people of color, a change she views as positive but overdue.
Gabrielle also wears her hair shaved, a look she first tried in 2019 and discussed in an interview with Refinery29 at the time. She said she had wanted to try the shaved blonde style since high school, and that once she went through with it, the change felt liberating and gave her a boost of confidence. In later years, including a 2024 conversation covered by ABC News’ Nightline, Gabrielle connected the choice to a more practical issue: on the set of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, she often ended up doing her own hair because the stylists hired for the show did not know how to work with her natural texture. She has pointed to that experience as part of a wider conversation about hair equity for actors of color in Hollywood.
Mental Health and Spirituality
Gabrielle has spoken openly about mental health and her spiritual practice. Speaking on the podcast Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This, hosted by Ziva Meditation founder Emily Fletcher, she said she took a medical leave from Spelman College during her sophomore year in 2015 while going through a period of depression, and chose to move to Los Angeles rather than return home because staying in Atlanta felt like standing still. Once in LA, she taught herself meditation and started a daily gratitude journaling practice with no teacher or guide, drawing on some of the centering and breathing exercises she had learned years earlier through karate.
Gabrielle credits that routine with a fast start in the industry. She told Fletcher she signed with a manager within her first month in Los Angeles, landed an agent by her second month, got her first audition by month four, and booked her first paid acting job, a guest starring role, by month five.
Gabrielle has also described herself as a spiritually attuned child. In the same interview, she said she saw figures, shadows, and people from a young age, and that her mother once found her having full conversations with what she believed might have been the spirit of a family friend who had died in their house before they moved in. Gabrielle said those experiences felt strong to her growing up, grew quiet during her lowest point in college, and have since become part of how she approaches acting, which she describes as connecting with the spirit of each character before she plays them.
Gabrielle has spoken about living with a combination of mental health conditions alongside ongoing anxiety. Speaking with Glamour UK, she said she was diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder while in college, and that the diagnosis has since been updated to bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and ADHD. She said she struggled without proper resources or guidance during her school years, and that she began building her own routine of self-care once she moved to Los Angeles. She told Fletcher that meditation and quick grounding exercises, including pausing to notice her breathing and her surroundings through her five senses, help her manage depressive episodes and panic, and that her therapist has told her she has an unusual ability to hold onto one clear, rational thought even in the middle of a panic attack or a heavy depressive episode.
Hobbies and Interests
Gabrielle holds a black belt in karate, and the story behind it goes deeper than a fun fact for her physical roles. Speaking on The Jennifer Hudson Show, she explained that her mother, who was adopted and raised without much direct access to Korean culture, enrolled her and her brother in a dojo near their home specifically to help the kids connect with their Asian heritage. Her mother made her promise not to quit until she earned her black belt, a promise Gabrielle nearly broke around the four year mark, when she was training in karate while also playing on three basketball teams and came home in tears asking to stop. Her mother held her to the deal, and Gabrielle went on to earn her black belt after about five years of training, crediting the sport with teaching her the discipline that still shapes her today. Speaking at Comic Con Cape Town, she said she once hoped to compete in karate at the Olympics after the sport was added to the Games, and that seeking out her own stunt work whenever a role allows has become her way of putting that martial arts background to use, partly to show young girls that they can take on physical roles too.
Gabrielle has said the combination of karate and years of playing basketball with her father, who first introduced her to the sport, gave her a physicality that has carried over into some of her more demanding action roles.
Outside of work, Gabrielle has said she keeps a dog and a parrot, joking at Comic Con Cape Town that the two pets have a love-hate relationship she is still trying to smooth over. She also paints and has recently started making music as a personal hobby, without any public releases tied to it. Asked about a dream role, she said she would love to play Storm in the X-Men franchise.
Social Media
Gabrielle is most active on Instagram, where she posts under the handle @tatigabrielle to an audience of roughly 1 million followers, with a bio that reads “Vintage Gangster, Hippie Sailor.” She has been less consistently active on X, formerly known as Twitter, and does not maintain a public TikTok account, according to entertainment outlets that have covered her online presence.
Personal Life
Gabrielle has disclosed that she was once in an abusive relationship. Speaking with Glamour UK, she said her family and loved ones helped her leave it, and that she is grateful for their support, saying she is not sure she would have gotten out of the relationship without them.
Gabrielle has spoken about her bond with her mother, including a visualization she leaned on often while building her early meditation practice: picturing herself walking a red carpet with her. Gabrielle said her mother was upset about her decision to leave school and move to Los Angeles, and the two did not speak for the first two months after she relocated. She described wanting to prove to her mother, whom she called someone who has lived a difficult life, that she could succeed on her own terms. The two have since attended smaller red carpet events together, though the larger moment Gabrielle originally pictured has not happened yet.
Beyond her mother, Gabrielle has pointed to a handful of other women as major influences. Speaking with Pop Culturalist, she called her manager her “showbiz mom,” describing her as a source of steady energy who taught her to enjoy every part of a long career and to work hard enough that she never looks back with regret. Gabrielle also named the late singer and actress Eartha Kitt as her first idol growing up, someone she never had the chance to meet in person but admired for being unapologetically herself, a quality she said still guides how carefully she chooses which parts of a project she is willing to compromise on.
Net Worth
Tati Gabrielle’s net worth, a realistic estimate built from her known income streams rather than copied from any single aggregator, places her net worth somewhere between $2 million and $4 million as of 2026.
That range comes from several years of steady paychecks from recurring and lead roles on major streaming shows, including Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, You, Kaleidoscope, and now The Last of Us, combined with a studio film credit in Uncharted and an upcoming one in Mortal Kombat II. Voice acting adds another layer of income, through her multi-season run on The Owl House and her lead role in the video game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, a format that typically pays well for a title backed by a major studio like Naughty Dog. Brand modeling work rounds out the picture. Given her expanding slate of projects, her earnings are believed to be heading higher in the next few years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Tati Gabrielle LGBTQ? Gabrielle has not publicly disclosed her sexual orientation. She is known instead as an outspoken LGBTQ+ ally, having presented at a PFLAG gala and spoken repeatedly about improving queer representation on screen, comments some online have mistakenly treated as a personal announcement rather than advocacy.
Why did Tati Gabrielle shave her head? She first shaved her head in 2019 as a style choice she had wanted to try since high school, calling the result liberating in an interview with Refinery29. She has since also tied the choice to a practical issue on the set of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, where stylists were not equipped to work with her natural hair texture, and has framed it as part of a broader hair equity conversation for actors of color.
What happened to Tati Gabrielle? Nothing negative. Gabrielle’s career has been on an upward run, with a promotion to series regular on The Last of Us season three, the role of Jade in Mortal Kombat II, and the lead voice role in Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet all landing in close succession. The video game role also put her at the center of some online friction after she voiced support for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in gaming, criticism she addressed directly in a later interview with Entertainment Weekly rather than walking back her position.
How tall is Tati Gabrielle? Gabrielle stands 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall.
Does Tati Gabrielle have a boyfriend? Gabrielle keeps her romantic life largely out of the public eye and has not publicly confirmed a boyfriend, girlfriend, or husband. The closest she has come to a widely reported romance rumor involved her Chilling Adventures of Sabrina co-star Chance Perdomo, which both actors described as a close friendship rather than romance. Note that search results for “Tati Gabriela,” a Puerto Rican model linked to Joe Jonas since 2025, refer to a different person entirely and are often mistaken for the actress covered in this article.
Does Tati Gabrielle have children? No. There is no public record of Gabrielle having children, and she has not spoken publicly about being a parent.
What ethnicity is Tati Gabrielle? Gabrielle’s father is African American. Her mother was born in Korea to a Korean woman and an African American soldier, and was later adopted by an African American military family, giving Gabrielle a mixed Korean and African American background.
