Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2872
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Retta works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Retta appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Retta. The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, romance, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Will Sterling, Richard Linklater, Kyle Marvin and others, Retta helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation (2020) as Donna Meagle · A Parks and Recreation Special (2020) as Donna Meagle · Fracture (2007) as Evidence Room Cop
Career snapshot
Ranked #2872 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
Most frequent director
Will Sterling
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Will Sterling
Most common genre
Comedy
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 31m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
6.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. First Sunday, Sex and Death 101, Fracture — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. First Sunday, Sex and Death 101, Fracture.
Most productive era
2010s
7 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.11 film | 6.82 films | 6.32 films |
| Action | 5.61 film | 6.51 film | — |
| Thriller | 7.31 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 5.82 films | 6.16 films | 5.24 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | 6.11 film | 5.31 film | 6.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ethel Walters (#100).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026That Friend
The current state of the argument, as Christine.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
16 of 16 films
as Evidence Room Cop
Directed by Gregory Hoblit
as Claudette
Directed by Richard Linklater
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Donna Meagle
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation (2020)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Donna Meagle gives Retta a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Donna Meagle
A Parks and Recreation Special (2020)
Performance score7.4
A Parks and Recreation Special asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Donna Meagle is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Evidence Room Cop
Fracture (2007)
Performance score7.2
Fracture asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Evidence Room Cop is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lobo
To the Bone (2017)
Performance score7.1
To the Bone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lobo is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Donna Meagle
Start here. The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation is the clearest statement of what Retta does — accessible, 20 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Retta at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Fracture (2007)
A deliberate change of key after The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
To the Bone (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Fracture — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Parks and Recreation Special (2020)
A deliberate change of key after To the Bone — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hit Man (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of A Parks and Recreation Special but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together
Notably Fracture
Daniel Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Sex and Death 101
Chris Kelly
Director
1 film together
Notably Other People
Charlie Bean
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lego Ninjago Movie
Lawrence Sher
Director
1 film together
Notably Father Figures
Marti Noxon
Director
1 film together
Notably To the Bone
Gene Stupnitsky
Director
1 film together
Notably Good Boys
Morgan Sackett
Director
1 film together
Notably A Parks and Recreation Special
Kyle Marvin
Director
1 film together
Notably 80 for Brady
Richard Linklater
Director
1 film together
Notably Hit Man
Will Sterling
Director
1 film together
Notably That Friend
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Morgan Sackett
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Parks and Recreation SpecialGregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FractureMarti Noxon
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
To the BoneRichard Linklater
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hit ManGene Stupnitsky
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good BoysCharlie Bean
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lego Ninjago MovieChris Kelly
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Other PeopleKyle Marvin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
80 for BradyDaniel Waters
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sex and Death 101Lawrence Sher
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Father FiguresWill Sterling
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
That FriendSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Fracture
as Evidence Room Cop
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Greatest Hits
as Dr. Evelyn Bartlett
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
as Donna Meagle
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fracture
as Evidence Room Cop
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
as Donna Meagle
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Retta has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
as Donna Meagle
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fracture
as Evidence Room Cop
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Greatest Hits
as Dr. Evelyn Bartlett
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Fracture
as Evidence Room Cop
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Paley Center Salutes Parks and Recreation
as Donna Meagle
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Lego Ninjago Movie
as Maggie the Cheerleader (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
as Party Planner
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sex Ed
as Sydney
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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