A&T Alumnus Jenkins Wins Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (April 26, 2021) – Terrence Jenkins ’04, better known as Terrence J, won an Oscar for the short film “Two Distant Strangers,” as an executive producer of the film.

Jenkins, along with other producers including actor Jesse Williams and NBA star Kevin Durant, produced the film written by Travon Free and directed by Free and Martin Desmond Roe. The film examines the deaths of Black Americans during encounters with police through the eyes of a character trapped in a time loop that keeps ending in his death. The film is available to watch on Netflix with subscription.

Jenkins graduated in 2004 from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. He started his career in the diversity office of NASCAR in Daytona Beach, Florida, but his ambition quickly took him to BET, where he became co-host of the network’s long-running, top-rated hip-hop and R&B video program, “106 & Park” in 2006 after winning the network’s Best New Faces Contest earlier that year.

Since then, he has appeared in multiple films and TV shows, including E! News, the MTV reality series “Are You the One?” and an ever-expanding list of additional big and small-screen projects. He is the author of “The Wealth of My Mother’s Wisdom” (HarperCollins) and the international ambassador for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.