Y'lan Noel
Y'lan Noel is an actor, born 1988.
Television came first. Y'lan Noel, born in Brooklyn in 1988, got his break playing Daniel King in the HBO series Insecure from 2016 to 2018. The part was written as a foil in a comedy about friendship and ambition, and Noel played him with enough restraint that the character kept complicating the show rather than resolving it.
The film that changed his standing is The First Purge in 2018, where he carried the lead as Dmitri Cimber, a Staten Island drug dealer who ends up as the only competent defence his neighbourhood has. It is an action performance more than a horror one, and it is the clearest evidence on his record that he can hold a film on his own.
Since then the work has spread out. He is Young Isaac in The Photograph, James in the comedy A Lot of Nothing, Big Cheese in the horror comedy Slice, and Ferdie in the 2024 miniseries Lady in the Lake. He took the lead role of Coltrane Wilder in the crime drama Nemesis. He also works in games: his performance as Troy Marshall in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was nominated for the British Academy Games Award for performer in a leading role, which says something real about where a chunk of serious dramatic acting now happens.
Movies (4)
TV (3)
Where to start with Y'lan Noel
The First Purge is where to begin, because it is the only thing here built around him. The film is a blunt political horror premise that works best once it stops arguing and becomes an action movie, and Noel's Dmitri is the reason the second half holds together at all.
Insecure is the better show and the better writing, so take it next if you want the range: the part asks him to be charming and evasive in the same scene, repeatedly, across the whole run. Lady in the Lake pushes him further into straight drama, and The Photograph is the softest thing on the list, a romance that uses him in flashback.
A Lot of Nothing is the interesting outlier, a small and uncomfortable satire that lets nobody off. Slice is a mess, cheerfully so. Nemesis is the current one.