Mike Epps

Mike Epps is an American actor, comedian, and rapper whose three-decade career has produced multiple defining American comedy film and TV roles — particularly his 2000–2003 trilogy as Day-Day Jones across F. Gary Gray's Friday film franchise sequels (Next Friday 2000 and Friday After Next 2002). He was born Michael Elliot Epps on November 18, 1970, in Indianapolis, Indiana, into an African-American working-class family. His father Tommie Epps was an Indianapolis-area Indianapolis School Board chair and high-school physical-education teacher, and his mother Mary Reed Epps was a homemaker.

His teenage and early-adulthood career across the late 1980s and early 1990s — across multiple Indianapolis-area juvenile-detention-and-prison incarcerations for armed-robbery offenses — preceded his early-1990s pivot to professional stand-up-comedy career. His 1995 New York City arrival and his subsequent late-1990s American stand-up-comedy career across multiple New York and Los Angeles comedy clubs produced his early-career American stand-up-comedy public profile.

His 1998 first feature-film supporting role in Strays launched his early-career American film career. His 2000 lead role as Day-Day Jones in F. Gary Gray's Next Friday — opposite Ice Cube's Craig Jones — launched his 2000s American comedy-film public profile. The 2000 first Next Friday Friday-franchise sequel grossed $58 million worldwide on a $11 million production budget.

His subsequent 2000s American comedy-film career has produced multiple American films — particularly the 2002 second Friday-franchise sequel Friday After Next (which grossed $34 million worldwide), his recurring role in the Bryan Singer-directed The Hangover film franchise (2009, 2011, 2013), and his lead role as Rich Pryor in Lee Daniels's Sanaa (2024, the Richard Pryor biographical drama). His parallel American TV career has produced his 2017 Netflix stand-up special Mike Epps: Only One Mike and his 2020 Netflix half-hour stand-up special Mike Epps: Indiana Mike. He has been with American TV personality Kyra Robinson since 2018, and the couple has two daughters.

His name Mike is the English short form of Michael (from the Hebrew Mikha'el meaning "who is like God?"). Mike has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.