Why Charles-Ann From Ozark Season 4 Looks So Familiar
When Netflix's "Ozark" premiered in 2017, Julia Garner immediately emerged as a fan favorite. Indeed, the actress's thick Missouri twang and mop of curls have endeared her to a variety of fans (via Reddit). For her role as the enterprising, foul-mouthed Ruth Langmore, Garner gained significant critical acclaim as well, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for her performance (via IMDb).
Of the troubled characters that populate the world of "Ozark," perhaps no one is dealt a worse hand than Ruth. Following Wyatt's murder in Season 4, Episode 7 ("Sanctified), Ruth and Three (Carson Holmes) are the only surviving members of the Langmore family. Notably, the finale episode also introduces a new quasi-family member: Charles-Ann, also known as Chuck, a friend of Ruth's late mother.
The actress playing the role of Charles-Ann might look familiar to television and musical theater lovers alike. Indeed, her appearance in "Ozark" is far from her first time performing in front of a camera. Here's where fans of "Ozark" may have seen her before.
Ali Stroker is a Glee Project finalist and Tony Award winner
Ali Stroker's acting background is in musical theater, experiences she later used to leverage her way into a career in television and film. In 2011, Stroker made her regional-theater debut as Olive in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," a role she would later reprise in 2018 (via WKYC).
In 2012, Stroker appeared in Season 2 of "The Glee Project," an Oxygen-network reality competition television series, the prize of which was a multi-episode arc in the popular Fox show "Glee." Despite only finishing as the runner-up (Blake Jenner won first place), Stroker nonetheless guest-starred in a 2013 episode of "Glee" as a love interest to Artie (Kevin McHale).
"I know that being in a wheelchair has closed doors, but this is a door that can open," she said ahead of her final performance on "The Glee Project." And open doors it did. In 2015, Stroker became the first actor who uses a wheelchair to appear on Broadway while starring in "Spring Awakening" (via The Daily News). She broke another barrier in 2019 when she became the first actor in a wheelchair to be nominated for and win a Tony Award for her performance in "Oklahoma!" (via The New York Times).
She appeared in Ten Days in the Valley alongside Kyra Sedgwick
Aside from Stroker's many theater accolades, the actress has also racked up a number of multi-episode arcs in various TV shows. In 2014 and 2015, Stroker appeared in three episodes of MTV's high school rom-com series "Faking It," a show which follows two teenagers who pretend to be gay in an attempt to be popular (via IMDb).
In 2017, Stroker joined the cast of ABC's "Ten Days in the Valley." The short-lived series marked Kyra Sedgwick's first starring television role since "The Closer." The drama follows Jane (Sedgwick), a television producer whose daughter suddenly goes missing. Stroker played a member of the show-within-a-show's writers' room whose research often involves law enforcement. "She's really intelligent, and when it comes to information, she's like a computer," Stroker told the Logo blog NewNowNext.
Stroker also discussed what it meant for the show's writers to adapt the script for her disability. "It's actually never really addressed in the show why I'm in a chair, and that's a statement for sure," she said. "Not every story about a disabled character has to be about the disability."
Stroker starred in Christmas Ever After
Following her work in "Ten Days in the Valley," Stroker continued to beef up her television credits by appearing in a number of one-off episodes in series as varied as Fox's "Lethal Weapon" and The CW's "Charmed." In a Season 4 episode of "The Bold Type," Stroker played a fashion brand representative named Olivia who is friends with Sutton (Meghann Fahy). Stroker also got to let loose on "Drunk History," where she played disability rights activist Judy Heumann in the 2018 episode "Civil Rights" (via IMDb).
With a stacked résumé and a Tony Award under her belt (via CNN), Stroker took on her first leading screen role with 2020's "Christmas Ever After." In the Lifetime holiday movie, Stroker played Izzi Simmons, a romance novelist who decamps to a Bed & Breakfast to get over her writer's block, only to discover that the owner, Matt (Daniel di Tomasso), is a dead ringer for the hunks on her book covers.
She's a dedicated Arconiac in Only Murders in the Building
Before landing a part in "Ozark," Stroker brought her talents to a number of other notable series in 2021.
For example, Stroker popped in on a single episode of "And Just Like That...," the sequel series to "Sex and the City." In the HBO show, Stroker played Chloe, the cutthroat podcasting colleague to Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw-Preston. Notably, Stroke's character in this series mainly serves the narrative purpose of telling a seasoned writer like Carrie that she needs to post more on social media, and she doesn't stick around for long.
However, this was far from the actress's only single-episode role in 2021. She also made a much more sympathetic turn in "Blue Bloods" Season 11, Episode 4 ("Redemption"). In the Tom Selleck-led series, Stroker played Allison Mulaney, a detective who was paralyzed in the line of fire and fights to keep her job as a disabled field detective. By the end of the episode, Mulaney manages to convince New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan that she is capable of continuing on the job.
Finally, Stroker showed off her comedic chops in two episodes of Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building." In Episodes 8 and 10, Stroker joined the series as a demanding member of a true-crime podcast fan community known as the Arconiacs. In the show, Stroker and her peers are a mere stand-in for today's rabid stan culture, though the ringleader Sam (Jaboukie Young-White) is perhaps the most emotionally invested.