Jonica T. Gibbs

Jonica "Jojo" T. Gibbs is an American actress and comedian. She plays the lead role of Hattie on the BET series Twenties. Early life and education Gibbs was born in South Carolina and raised by her great-grandparents in Hampstead, North Carolina. She received her bachelor's degree in journalism from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Negative experiences with faculty members in the department discouraged her from pursuing journalism. After graduation, she worked several jobs, including as a substitute teacher, and acted in student films at SCAD. Career Gibbs moved to Los Angeles in 2015 to pursue acting professionally, a year after she began stand-up comedy. She and her close friend Rashonda Joplin started a production company and developed the web series No More Comics in L.A. They shot and financed two episodes and created a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the remaining eight episodes. They reached out to a number of Black television creatives to market the campaign, including Lena Waithe. Waithe invited Gibbs to audition for Twenties, which was her first audition. Gibbs was cast in the lead role as Hattie, a broke, queer, aspiring TV writer loosely based on Waithe's experiences. Gibbs has spoken about the significance of playing one of few masculine-of-center lesbians in American media.