FrameThrower · Actors · Yaya DaCosta
Yaya DaCosta
4 films · 301 frames · top-billed in 1 · 2007–2016
Born 15 November 1982 · Harlem, New York, New York, USA
Camara DaCosta Johnson, professionally known as Yaya Alafia (formerly Yaya DaCosta), is an American actress and model. She's best known for her starring role as April Sexton on NBC's Chicago Med, as Andrea Vaughn in Our Kind of People, and as Whitney Houston in the TV movie Whitney.
She was the runner-up in Cycle 3 of America's Next Top Model. She eventually went to star as Cassandra in ABC's daytime soap All My Children, as Nico Slater in ABC's comedy-drama Ugly Betty, and as April Sexton on NBC's medical drama Chicago Med.
She's also appeared in films including The Kids Are All Right, In Time, The Messenger, The Butler, And So It Goes, and The Nice Guys.
How their films are shot
Measured across 301 frames from the 4 films we hold. This is the look of the work Yaya takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 4 films we hold, 62% of their frames are night, 54% low key — the look of the work Yaya takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 301 frames from Yaya DaCosta's 4 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.