---
title: "Octavia Spencer, who outlasted Hollywood's doubts, returns in 'Ride or Die'"
description: "Octavia Spencer spent years in small roles before an Oscar made her a star. Now she headlines 'Ride or Die,' an action comedy premiering Wednesday on Prime Video, in which she plays a woman who learns her best friend is an assassin."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Naomi Fields"
published: 2026-07-15T10:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-15T10:00:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/octavia-spencer-who-outlasted-hollywood-s-doubts-returns-in-ride-or-die
tags: ["octavia spencer", "ride or die", "prime video", "hollywood", "television"]
---
# Octavia Spencer, who outlasted Hollywood's doubts, returns in 'Ride or Die'

Octavia Spencer spent years in small roles before an Oscar made her a star. Now she headlines 'Ride or Die,' an action comedy premiering Wednesday on Prime Video, in which she plays a woman who learns her best friend is an assassin.

Octavia Spencer's career is a lesson in persistence. For years she worked the margins of Hollywood, a clerk here, a nurse there, small parts that rarely made the poster, before her role as the sharp-tongued maid Minny Jackson in the 2011 film "The Help" won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. This week she is back at the center of the frame, headlining a new series built around her.

## The new show

"Ride or Die" [premieres Wednesday, July 15, on Prime Video, with all eight episodes released at once](https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/hannah-waddingham-octavia-spencer-ride-or-die-premiere-date-1236744941/). Created by Tessa Coates, the action comedy stars Spencer as Debbie Claybourne, a woman who discovers that her longtime best friend, Judith Burton, played by Hannah Waddingham, is secretly an international assassin. When a job goes wrong and a figure from Judith's past resurfaces, the two are forced to flee together across Europe. Bill Nighy also stars. The premise, two friends thrown into chaos and forced to keep moving, is played for comedy and thrills, and gives Spencer a rare action-forward lead.

## The long road there

That she is carrying a show at all is the payoff of a slow climb. After her Oscar, Spencer became one of the most reliable and respected character actors in film, and one of the most decorated. She earned a supporting-actress nomination for playing the NASA mathematician Dorothy Vaughan in "Hidden Figures" (2016), then another for Guillermo del Toro's "The Shape of Water" (2017), making her the first Black actress nominated for Academy Awards in consecutive years. Along the way she has moved into producing, developing and starring in projects rather than waiting to be cast in them.

## In her own words

Spencer has been candid about how hard that traction was to gain, and about pushing the industry to do better by actors like her. ["I always, always fight,"](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/07/909596392/i-always-always-fight-octavia-spencer-on-demanding-more-from-hollywood) she told NPR in 2020, describing her insistence on being valued and paid fairly. That refusal to settle is the through line of a career that never came easily and, by her account, was never handed to her.

## Why it lands now

"Ride or Die" arrives as a kind of full-circle moment: an actress once relegated to bit parts now anchoring a big, breezy streaming series alongside a marquee co-star. For viewers, it is a chance to see Spencer in a lighter, propulsive register than the dramas that made her name. For Spencer, it is one more role on her own terms, the reward, as she tells it, of showing up and refusing to leave.

## Sources

- [Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer's 'Ride or Die' gets July premiere date](https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/hannah-waddingham-octavia-spencer-ride-or-die-premiere-date-1236744941/)
- ['I always, always fight': Octavia Spencer on demanding more from Hollywood](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/07/909596392/i-always-always-fight-octavia-spencer-on-demanding-more-from-hollywood)