Aya Cash

Aya Cash (born July 13, 1982) is an American actress known for her roles in television and film. She gained recognition for portraying Gretchen Cutler in the FX/FXX dark comedy You’re the Worst (2014–2019) and played Stormfront in Amazon Prime Video’s superhero drama The Boys (2020–2022). She also starred as Cheryl Peterson in the Fox sitcom Welcome to Flatch and most recently appeared as Anita in HBO’s The Franchise. Her performance in You’re the Worst earned her nominations for the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy.

Cash has appeared in several films, including The Oranges (2011), Sleepwalk with Me (2012), Begin Again (2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Mary Goes Round (2017), Game Over, Man! (2018), and Scare Me (2020).

Born in San Francisco, California, she is the daughter of poet and novelist Kim Addonizio and Buddhist teacher Eugene Cash. On her mother’s side, she is the granddaughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie. While her father is Jewish and her mother is Catholic, Cash was raised Jewish but no longer practices the religion.

She attended the San Francisco School of the Arts and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting through the Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program. After moving to New York City, she initially struggled financially, working as a full-time waitress before establishing her acting career.

Her television credits include guest roles in Brotherhood, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Mercy, and The Newsroom. She was also a series regular in the short-lived 2011 Fox comedy Traffic Light. In 2019, she was cast as the neo-Nazi superhero Stormfront in The Boys, with the second season premiering in September 2020.

Cash met writer and producer Josh Alexander while working as his waitress, and after dating for seven years, they married in 2012. The couple resides in New York City.

As a celebrity ambassador for INARA, Cash supports war-wounded refugee children from Syria in receiving medical care. She also has a hawk tattoo on her back, believing that “Aya” meant “hawk” in Hebrew, though she later learned it actually refers to the honey buzzard in Modern Hebrew.

In addition to film and television, Cash has appeared in Off-Broadway productions, including the 2014 world premiere of Zoe Kazan’s play Trudy and Max in Love.