Hari Williams is an actor, writer, filmmaker who uses the means of narrative storytelling to educate and entertain. For the first ten years of my life I was raised on a Black Vedantic ashram in the mountains of Agoura Hills founded by the legendary Alice Coltrane her spiritual name being Swamini Turiyasangitananda. It was an eclectic and principled community named Sai Anantam well rooted in the Vedantic traditions of love, peace, right action, and diminishment of the egoic self. It was the sitar meets the jazz piano, some Gandhi crossed with Gil Scott Heron. It was there that he was first put on a professional stage at six years old having no idea that the seemingly innocuous childhood experience would be the first steps in developing a passion for performance that would lead to a BFA in Theater Arts and minor in Film Production from Howard University. 

Since returning to LA and progressively building his career, Hari has been fortunate to appear in a variety of film, TV, and digital media projects, with credits across platforms such as Netflix, Showtime, and Amazon. He has appeared in films that have screened in festivals nationwide and garnered top honors including Best Short at the HBO sponsored Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (Stuck). His first love remains the stage however and pre-pandemic would perform in at least one show yearly, including 2017’s Little Children Dream of God for which he was awarded “Star Making Performance” by Stage Scene LA.

His LA based Thought Collective Productions celebrated it’s first production deal when he licensed the sketch comedy discussion series, Unpacked, to a prominent streaming platform. The show combines the satirical wit of Chappelle’s Show with the robust discussion of Real Time w/ Bill Maher, with the aim of using laughter as a means to engage in challenging, often divisive issues to foster greater levels of understanding. More recently he is in post production on the historical action/drama short, Unconquered, a film that tells the story of John Horse, a Black and Seminole freedom fighter who rose to prominence as a leader when the Seminole violently resisted forced relocation and extermination at the hands of Andrew Jackson and the US Army. Hari recognizes the importance of creating new cultural narratives to not only examine the past but contextualize the present so we can build a more honest and equitable collective future.