Wrenn Schmidt
Melinda Wrenn Schmidt (born February 18, 1983) is an American actress. She is best known for her starring role as NASA engineer, flight director, and later director of NASA Margo Madison in the Apple TV+ original science-fiction space drama series For All Mankind. Her other television roles include Julia Sagorsky in the period drama series Boardwalk Empire (2012–2013), KGB handler Kate in the spy drama series The Americans (2014), Dr Iris Campbell on the thriller series Person of Interest (2014–2016), and Megan Holter in the horror series Outcast (2016–2018). Her film roles include the horror film Preservation (2014), the biographical drama I Saw the Light (2015), the war film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016), the romantic comedy, The Good Catholic (2017), and the science-fiction horror film Nope (2022). Schmidt was born in Lexington, South Carolina. Her father is a biology professor, and her mother is a former dietitian. She comes from mixed European heritage; German from her father, including English, Scots-Irish, Polish, and Austrian, among others. She attended the residential high school South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities in Greenville, graduating from their inaugural drama class in 2001. She then attended Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts in University Park, Texas, graduating summa cum laude in 2005 with a B.F.A. in theatre studies and history. She had a part in the George F. Walker play, Heaven, at Dallas' Kitchen Dog Theater in 2003. Schmidt moved to New York City to intern with an off-Broadway theatre company, and worked three jobs as she began auditioning for acting roles. Schmidt was first cast in Crazy for the Dog in 2006 by the Jean Cocteau Repertory. She served as an understudy in a national tour of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner, directed by Anthony Page. The role led to her finding a talent agent, and to her first television appearances on NBC's Law & Order and CBS' 3 lbs in 2006.
