Retta is an actress, a comedian and the celebrity host of HGTV's irresistibly offbeat home-improvement show Ugliest House in America and its spooky spinoff, Scariest House in America. And as you might have gathered, Retta is one of those people — like Adele, Elvis, Sting and Cher — who doesn't need a last name to facilitate instant recognition. Perhaps you know her as the confident, sharp-witted, razor-tongued and glamour-fixated Donna Meagle on the groundbreaking sitcom Parks and Recreation, which ran from 2009 to 2015. It's a gem of a role defined by cool confidence, sly wisdom and a certain hard-to-pin-down mystique. Ahead, learn more about Retta, her career and her role on HGTV.

History and Background

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Marietta Sangai Sirleaf (aka Retta) grew up in the Cliffwood Beach section of the state, where she attended Matawan Regional High School. She went on to attend Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated with a degree in sociology. After graduating, she worked as a pharmaceutical chemist while she embarked on a side hustle doing stand-up comedy at Charlie Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh, North Carolina.

That stint eventually led, in 1996, to Retta moving to Los Angeles to fully pursue a career in comedy. Besides doing club and college-circuit stand-up, she began making television appearances — which include Comedy Central's Premium Blend, E! Entertainment Television's The Soup, FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the syndicated talk show The Jenny Jones Show.

Television and Film Career

In 2009, Retta began making appearances as Donna during the first season of Parks and Rec and, by the third season, she'd been upgraded to a full-time cast member. The show ran for seven seasons, amassed a large and cultlike following, received a Peabody Award in 2011, was nominated for no less than 14 Emmys during its run and (inexplicably!) never received a single one!

In 2013, Retta hosted the third Critics' Choice Television Awards and, in 2014, appeared as a contestant alongside other celebs on NBC's Hollywood Game Night. In 2015, she appeared in the second season of the Bravo original series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce and, from 2018 to 2021, starred in the NBC crime-comedy series Good Girls.

Retta's other television appearances include Drunk History (2014), Key & Peele (2014), Home Movie: The Princess Bride (shot via remote locations during COVID lockdown, 2020), The Morning Show (appearing as herself, 2023) and Elsbeth (2024-25). And she's found something of a niche in television voiceover work in animated series like Where's Waldo, Big Mouth, DuckTales, Duncanville and Bubble Guppies.

Retta has also held a number of movie roles. Her feature film credits include Slackers (2002), Fracture (2007), First Sunday (2008), Other People (2016), To the Bone, Band Aid, Father Figures (all 2017), Good Boys (2019), Hit Man, 80 for Brady (both 2023) and The Greatest Hits (2024).

Retta published her first book in 2018 — a series of personal essays colorfully titled So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y'all Don't Even Know.

Retta on Parks and Rec

Even if you've somehow missed watching Parks and Rec, you've probably encountered (or even uttered) Retta's now-famous catchphrase that became a mainstay in the series after it appeared in a hilariously iconic episode. It's a buzzy and infectious slogan that entered America's pop-culture lexicon with the speed of a brushfire.

The phrase in question is, "Treat yo self!" In the show, it refers to a once-a-year day of celebration marked by taking the entire day off to indulge oneself, unapologetically, in absolute and unbridled luxury. It's a perfectly concise and jubilant personal mantra that's at once bougie and self-empowering. It's also just flat-out fun to say.

Full disclosure: Though Retta, along with co-star Aziz Ansari, helped popularize the enduring now-practically ubiquitous phrase, she confesses that she herself is somewhat over it. As Time magazine reported, she grew weary of those three words when she began hearing them repeated back to her by fans and strangers 10 or more times a day. (So if you should happen to run into Retta somewhere, maybe don't bring it up.) Nonetheless, it's a powerhouse of a catchphrase — and one that helped her cement her role in the NBC series. But as Backstage magazine rightly pointed out, Retta herself is far more than just a catchphrase. She's a talented actress (and Ugliest House finder). The Retta universe just keeps expanding.

Retta's Quest for America's Ugliest House

Most people associate HGTV with beautiful homes, lovely locations, innovative designs and dramatic home makeovers. There are some HGTV shows, however, that center around seeking out striking examples of egregious design, poor construction, ill-conceived planning, bad execution or absent maintenance — and then devising innovative ways to fix those problems. The "before" and "after" comparisons in those cases tend to be some dramatic and striking scenes on the network, but there's one show in particular that purposefully takes the "dramatic makeover" scenario to its logical limit.

HGTV's Ugliest House in America, which premiered in 2021, takes an annual tour across the US in search of, well, the title is self-explanatory. Each season of the series features tours of 12 properties nominated by homeowners who believe their design-challenged homes are among the worst in the country. Homes visited are characterized by gaudy designs, clashing elements, nonsensical floor plans, visual hodgepodges and a sundry of other domicile horrors.

Host and tour guide for this extraordinary adventure is none other than self-proclaimed home-improvement and renovation enthusiast Retta. And she's the ideal candidate for this type of endeavor. Her spot-on reviews and assessments of these unfortunate homes — and her personal takes on the downright shocking things she uncovers — are priceless.

In partnership with designer Alison Victoria, host of HGTV's Sin City Rehab, Retta identifies the most unsightly homes region by region, then determines the single most outlandish example of pure badness. Alison then brings her elevated design expertise and a $150,000 renovation budget to reimagine the home's functionality and aesthetics. The results can be pretty amazing.

"Ugliest House in America offers an exploration of America’s homes like we’ve never seen before,” said Betsy Ayala, senior vice president at HGTV. "This series is eye candy with a twist as we showcase ‘home’ in an entirely new way. And with Retta at the helm, it's a hilarious and fun-filled journey of the country’s oddest, wildest and most ridiculous homes.”

"I loooove a renovation before-and-after," added Retta. "So to have a front-row seat from beginning to end in Ugliest House in America is pretty damn exciting — especially since I fancy myself an amateur designer."

And for those who enjoy Ugliest House in America, HGTV offers a frighteningly compelling counterpart — Scariest House in America — which appropriately appears in October, just in time for Halloween. The series boasts a variety of eerie and terrifying houses that contain everything from built-in death traps and questionable taxidermy to daunting basements and ghost sightings. Featured frightful homes have included a former jail inhabited by bats, an alleged mobster hideout and a crumbling home that gives off witchy vibes. "Not sure how I got roped into this," said Retta. “I don’t do scary. I don’t like to be scared. I don’t like scary movies. Halloween is my least favorite holiday — but here we are."

Retta's Iconic Outfits

During her role on Ugliest House in America, Retta became known for her bright and eye-catching outfits. In fact, fans started to wonder if Retta occasionally dressed to match the homes she was touring.

"Tis fate!” Retta told HGTV in an interview. “[Costume designer Jaime Elyse and I] have no idea what the houses look like beforehand. We decide on the season’s looks based on what I’m feeling and then ‘assign’ looks to regions based on what the expected weather is going to be … and as the kids say, ‘vibes.’ Any perceived outfit-to-house correlation is happenstance."

Either way, Retta's fun fits are a mainstay (and a fan favorite).

Fun Facts About Retta

• Early in her stand-up career, Retta, like many great comedians, suffered from stage fright (something she has clearly overcome).
• She made her first-ever television appearance in October 1997 in an uncredited minor role — as "waitress" — in the sitcom Moesha.
• Her character Donna on Parks and Rec was initially just a minor role, but later became one of the principals among the outstanding ensemble cast that also included Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe.
• Retta's aunt, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is a politician who served as the 24th president of the nation of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Ellen is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and was the first elected female head-of-state in Africa.
• Before pursuing her career in acting and stand-up, Retta was a pre-med major at Duke University.
• She is a huge fan of the Los Angeles Kings ice hockey team.
• Retta's Instagram handle is — wait for it — @unforettable.

Keep Up With Retta Online

• Retta on Instagram
• Retta on X
• Retta on TikTok
• Retta on IMDB