In total, Louise and Luther Walker had five kids, a huge chaotic family that started in Oakland. They had grown up on the same block, eventually coming together as high school sweethearts. Though their relationship ended upon graduation, they stayed in touch and reconciled after college. Married by 25, they decided to wait a few years to start a family -- though both had come from large and busy homes themselves, and wanted to recreate that in their own lives. Taraja was the third of the Walker children, born on a hot June day in 1989. Although a fairly fussy baby, Taraja grew up to be, by all accounts, a pretty shy child. She had a very small number of friends in dance class, then later pre-school and kindergarten and so on. Mostly, she spoke to her siblings -- the eldest she turned to for protection, the younger two she took care of 'as her own'. In fact, the only hint that one day entertainment was in the cards for Taraja was that she would often put on little plays with her siblings, or maybe that she was wildly imaginative when it came to games of pretend.

As Taraja grew older, she began to emerge from her shell, albeit slowly. Still, her "I want to become an actor!" moment came much later -- she was good in school and decent at soccer and continued to dance, and like many children her goals in the distant future changed almost bi-weekly. When Taraja was thirteen, her parents decided to move to Los Angeles -- a job opportunity had opened up for Luther, and so the Walker family found themselves relocating to southern California. Like many shy kids who had been deemed 'weird' by their peers, Taraja saw the move as a chance to reinvent herself and once she started high school, she drifted through activities 'trying to be more involved', but really trying to find something that intrigued her. Although she started in drama by initially painting the sets, by her sophomore year she was auditioing for the musical. It wasn't like she'd ever get the role, right? And in a way, right she was. Taraja was cast as an understudy, and didn't expect to ever have to go on. The first time, she didn't. The next year, she once again found herself as an understudy -- only this time, the leading lady got pulled out of school and put into rehab because of an eating disorder, and Taraja found herself more or less thrust into the spotlight.

If this was a movie, that would be Taraja's a-ha moment. Instead, although she figured she totally had it under control, the first night was something of a nervous disaster (she puked). The second night was barely any better. The third night, under the reminder from her sister that "no one actually cares, you know?", when Taraja flubbed a line -- she improvised, and this time, the laughs she garnered were less at her expernse. That was her big a-ha moment, and she went forward taking acting classes and talking seriously to her parents about wanting to act. Seriously. To their credit, neither Luther nor Louise really discouraged Tara, so much as urged her to keep her options open. But totally on fire as she was, she talked them into cheaply getting her headshots and letting her take the bus to auditions. In a stroke of luck, Taraja landed a role very shortly on a Nickelodeon show about a girl's soccer team called Just For Kicks, and it premiered in January of 2006. It was also canceled very soon thereafter. Although Taraja landed a couple of recurring guest roles on other sitcoms, her streak of luck proved to be immensely short lived and she put her acting career on hiatus to go to college, accepting enrollment at the University of Southern California.

Taraja didn't consider her dream dead so much as put on hold for an indeterminate amount of time. She applied herself toward normal college experiences, but living on her own and the pressures of impending adulthood soon kickstarted her anxiety. Looking for her performance fix, Taraja began taking improv classes at UCB (Upright Citizen's Brigade), which helped her roll better with life's punches, and to her surprise quickly became ingratiated into the comedy scene. It was through UCB that she was urged to audition for The Daily Show. Doubting it would amount to anything, she sent in a tape -- only to receive a callback and a chance to audition live. Even after she returned from New York, she didn't think it would be an issue, only to find herself offered a position as the show's youngest correspondent. Taraja, in her last semester at USC, didn't even hesitate to accept the offer and drop out of college without a degree.