Seven Names to Know This Fall

Every fall a handful of people stop being somebody's secret. Here are seven whose moment is arriving right now. Not predictions. Receipts.

He is the voice of young Mufasa. He carried the Netflix thriller Rebel Ridge on his shoulders. And this summer he became John Stewart, the Green Lantern, in HBO's Lanterns. A Black superhero leading a prestige series, played by a kid from South London who trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Watch the stillness. He does more with a stare than most actors do with a monologue.

Two Tony Awards, back to back, in 2024 and 2025, for Purlie Victorious and then Purpose. Four nominations in four straight years. Broadway has been trying to find words for her for a while. Here are ours: she is the best stage actor of her generation, and the movies are about to figure it out.

Last year she stole One Battle After Another from a cast of legends. This month she leads The Julia Set at Toronto, playing a brilliant student who keeps getting overlooked. There is a joke in there somewhere about Hollywood, and she is in on it.

A Rwandan director whose first feature, Ben'Imana, won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in May, the prize for the best debut film in the entire festival. It plays Toronto this month. It is about forgiveness after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and she made it at home, in her own language, and the world came to her.

“The come-up is not luck. It is the year the work finally outran the doubt.”

His film Voices premieres at Toronto: a bellhop in a 1967 Detroit motel who schemes to steal a musical act's identity for his one shot. A period piece with a heist heart, from a first-time feature director. That is a swing. We like swings.

A Kenyan singer-songwriter with layered, aching songs, named to Apple Music's Africa Rising class this year. If you love SZA's honesty and Tems's air, this is your next favorite artist. She writes like she is telling you something she has not told anyone else.

An R&B singer whose debut album climbed to number four on Apple Music's R&B chart without a machine behind it. Real voice, real songs, real slow build. That is how the ones who last usually start.

Being early is a habit, and it is cheap. Follow all seven today, before the press cycle starts, because a follow now counts in the rooms where these careers get decided and a repost in March does not. Buy one thing rather than streaming everything: an album, an opening-weekend ticket, a Broadway seat in the back row. Four of these names are on the Toronto slate, so track the film titles and be there the first weekend they land.

Then do it locally, where it counts double. The come-up nearest you is on Frequency and Knect TV.

That is your job. The Come-Up runs on what the community sends in. If there is a name in your city that belongs on this list, post it, tag Culture, and we will listen before we write. If the name is yours, start the channel and make it easy on us.