Nadji Jeter

Nadji Jeter’s Journey from Atlanta to Spider-Man’s Brooklyn

Long before Miles Morales swung across the Manhattan skyline, Nadji Jeter was cutting his teeth on Atlanta hardwood. Born October 18, 1996, he spent his early childhood performing as “Lil Harry the Hawk,” the dancing mascot for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. At nine, that same energy carried him to Usher’s New Look Foundation Gala, where he performed as a featured dancer. By 2007, the family had packed up for Los Angeles, and a career in front of cameras and microphones was no longer a question of if but when.

Live-action came first. Guest spots on Grey’s Anatomy and Everybody Hates Chris gave Jeter his screen footing before Adam Sandler handed him the role of Andre McKenzie in Grown Ups (2010) and its 2013 sequel. From 2011 to 2015 he held a series-regular slot on the BET sitcom Reed Between the Lines alongside Tracee Ellis Ross and Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Youth casting kept him busy through the mid-2010s, with The 5th Wave and Wonder rounding out a film resume that most actors spend a decade chasing.

Sam and The Last of Us: A First Taste of Gaming

Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us arrived in 2013 carrying the weight of the entire action-adventure genre on its shoulders, and Jeter, then sixteen, stepped into Sam – the younger brother whose arc cuts through the game’s most emotionally devastating chapter. The performance earned him and the ensemble cast a 2014 BTVA People’s Choice Award for Best Vocal Ensemble in a Video Game. For many players, Sam was their first encounter with Jeter’s voice, though they would not have to wait long for a far larger one.

Miles Morales and the Insomniac Games Era

Insomniac Games introduced Miles Morales as a supporting character in Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018), and Jeter arrived with the role already fully formed. The chemistry between him and Yuri Lowenthal’s Peter Parker gave the game its emotional spine. Miles graduated to protagonist in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), a standalone title that placed the full weight of a narrative on Jeter’s shoulders via both voice and motion capture. The industry responded: a Game Awards nomination for Best Performance, a BAFTA Games Award nomination for Performer in a Leading Role, and a D.I.C.E. Award win for Outstanding Achievement in Character all followed within months of release.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (2019) and the animated Disney XD Spider-Man series (2017-2020) extended the same performance across different platforms, cementing Jeter as the definitive Miles Morales for an entire generation of fans. The through line connecting every iteration is a consistent quality: a Miles who sounds young without sounding small, uncertain without sounding weak.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Back-to-Back BAFTA Wins

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launched in October 2023 as one of the highest-profile PS5 exclusives of that year, and the dual-protagonist structure handed Jeter a co-lead credit alongside Lowenthal for the first time. The game’s story demanded a more weathered Miles than the 2020 standalone, and Jeter delivered exactly that. At the 2024 BAFTA Games Awards he collected the Performer in a Leading Role trophy – his second consecutive win in the category – and added a second D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character to go with it. Few voice actors of his generation can point to that kind of consecutive institutional recognition for the same role.

Beyond the awards shelf, Jeter’s Miles Morales has become one of the most commercially successful character performances in PlayStation’s history. The Insomniac Spider-Man franchise has moved tens of millions of units, and Jeter’s voice is stitched through all of it.