TCA 2019: Sneak Peek Scoop From the Casts of ‘The Good Fight,’ ‘This Is Us’ & More (PHOTOS)
In Pop’s new dark comedy Flack (February 21), Anna Paquin stars as a self-sabotaging publicist. She’s also a co–executive producer with husband Stephen Moyer. “Steve and I look for writing that connects, is smart, makes us think, laugh or cry, or hopefully all of the above,” Paquin says. “[The scripts] ticked all the boxes.”
The arrival of Machiavellian lawyer Roland Blum (Michael Sheen, center) on The Good Fight (CBS All Access, March 14) shakes up legal eagles Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski, left) and Liz Lawrence (Audra McDonald). “He just doesn’t play by the same rules that everyone else plays by,” Sheen says, and the two women “are both drawn to that and repelled by it.”
After three seasons playing an FBI agent on The Following, Kevin Bacon returns to the job as a shady Fed trying to clean up 1990s Boston in Showtime’s upcoming City on a Hill. The drama “has a kind of gritty vibe reminiscent of the movies I loved in the ’70s from [Martin] Scorsese and Sidney Lumet,” the actor says.
Beth Pearson (Susan Kelechi Watson) always puts herself second to husband Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and their kids on NBC’s This Is Us, but Watson says, “I never saw [her] as perfection.” And as the oh-so-giving character goes through her own “struggles and trials” — especially in February 19’s Beth-centric episode — she is finally “afforded opportunity to be supported.”
Art imitates life: The Affair‘s Ruth Wilson stars in PBS’s Mrs. Wilson (March 31) as her own grandmother, who discovered after her husband’s death that he had several secret families. During the discussion for the three-hour mini-series, the hotel’s fire alarm kept going off, inspiring Wilson to joke that it was
“Grandfather cursing it!”
PBS’s six-part adaptation of Victor Hugo’s epic Les Misérables (April 14) will have all of the drama and romance of the stage version — but none of the songs. “[Singing] was embargoed” on set, explains David Oyelowo (left), who tackles the role of Javert opposite Lily Collins’s Fantine and Dominic West’s Jean Valjean. “I had to scurry away to my trailer every time I had the need.”
The photo suite was humming during the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, California, where networks and streamers brought their actors, creators and executives to tout new and current programming.
For more than two weeks, ending February 13, the stars dished about their projects and struck a pose for these gorgeous portraits. Here are several who came by and the intel they revealed.
Reporting by Kate Hahn, Jim Halterman and Damian Holbrook
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