Kimberly Rochelle Hébert Gregory (née Hébert; 7 December 1972 - 3 October 2025) was an American actress whose career stretched from Chicago storefront stages and Off-Broadway premieres to HBO comedy, network drama, and beloved animated voice work. She was best known as Dr. Belinda Brown, the formidable new principal of North Jackson High School on HBO's Vice Principals (2016 - 2017), opposite Danny McBride and Walton Goggins. Trade coverage at the time called her the series breakout. Away from that role she voiced Nicole Williams, the mother of the title character, on Cartoon Network's Craig of the Creek and its spinoffs, co-starred as Yvette on ABC's Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, and appeared in films including Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer and the 2019 drama Five Feet Apart.
Born in Houston, Texas, to Clarence Hébert and Jacqueline McCloud, she was the youngest of three children. She grew up in the city's South Union Church of Christ community, sang in the choir, and discovered acting in elementary school. She graduated from Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (later Kinder HSPVA), then followed her older sister Tracey Hébert-Seck to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. There she earned a B.A. in psychology in 1994, spent a junior-year term in London studying classical theatre with tutors connected to RADA and LAMDA, and renewed a lifelong commitment to the stage.
After college she moved to Chicago. She briefly attended The Theatre School at DePaul University for an M.F.A. in acting, then immersed herself in the city's theatre scene, including Chicago Theatre Company productions such as Train Is Comin' (1996) and a stage adaptation of Walter Mosley's A Red Death (1997). For Shay Youngblood's Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery she won a Black Theatre Alliance Award and received a 1998 Joseph Jefferson Awards Equity Branch nomination for best supporting actress. She later appeared at the Goodman Theatre (Ida Jackson in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner) and Court Theatre (Zerbinette in Scapin). While building that career she completed a master's in social work at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration in 2002 and worked as a social worker in Bronzeville and suburban schools, describing the work as another way to explore human identity.
In Chicago she married fellow actor Chester Moore Gregory Jr. Their son, Chester Moore Gregory III, was born on 10 October 1999. The family moved to New York City in 2004. Broadway itself largely eluded her during eight New York years, but Off-Broadway and regional theatre did not. She originated roles in Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays at The Public Theater and in Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, earning 2012 Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for Outstanding Featured Actress. She also performed in Gee's Bend, Antony and Cleopatra, The Hot L Baltimore at Steppenwolf, and later Los Angeles stage work including Robert O'Hara's Barbecue and Black Super Hero Magic Mama at the Geffen Playhouse. A Geffen mounting of Meet Vera Stark with Second Stage colleagues helped plant her in Los Angeles, where television opportunities expanded.
Screen credits began with Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife (2007) and guest turns across Gossip Girl, Law & Order, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, and many others. A recurring role as Lucinda Miller on Lifetime's Devious Maids (2014) preceded Vice Principals. Later television included Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Better Call Saul, The Chi, Genius: Aretha (as pioneering talent agent Ruth Bowen), Medical Police, Future Man, and voice roles on Jessica's Big Little World, Craig Before the Creek, Carol & the End of the World, and No Activity.
In 2017 she founded Black Rebirth Collective (BRC), a Los Angeles theatre nonprofit created as a safe creative "gymnasium" for Black women artists, rooted in diaspora expression and the Kwanzaa principle of Ujima. The collective partnered with the Geffen Playhouse and The Wallis, incubating readings and work by writers such as Katori Hall and staging evenings of one-acts by Black women playwrights. In a 2021 Voyage LA interview she called theatre her artistic love language and urged women to bet on themselves.
She and Chester Gregory later divorced. She is survived by their son, her parents, her sister and brother, her former husband, nieces and a nephew, her grandmother, and a wide circle of friends dating back to childhood in Houston. On 3 October 2025 she died in Los Angeles at age 52. The cause was not made public. Chester Gregory announced her death with a poetic tribute calling her "brilliance embodied." Walton Goggins wrote that she was "one of the best I've ever worked with," a "professionals professional" and a "SOPRANO that never missed a note." Colleagues including Busy Philipps, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jason Ritter, and Leslie Odom Jr. added public remembrances. Her body of work, and the community spaces she built for Black women in theatre, remain her public legacy.
lit a candle 3h ago
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2Posts by Kimberly, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.