THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie has joined the upcoming CBS All Access drama as a series regular, it was announced Wednesday.
Leslie will play Maia, Diane’s goddaughter who joins her firm just after passing the bar, and is a key part of Diane’s plan for the future.
“We’re thrilled to have Rose on board,” showrunners Robert and Michelle King said. “We needed a young actress who could hold her own with Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo, and Rose is perfect. She’s real, she’s strong and she can play comedy. If we designed an actress from the ground up, we couldn’t have done better.”
In addition to Baranski and Jumbo, who were both series regulars on the flagship series, Leslie also joins spinoff cast member Sarah Steele. Steele, who recurred for six of the drama’s seven seasons as Eli’s daughter (and Alicia’s body woman), Marissa Gold.
The still-untitled spinoff will center around an enormous financial scam that has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, while simultaneously wiping out her mentor Diane Lockhart’s savings. Forced out of Lockhart & Lee, Diane joins Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago’s pre-eminent law firms.
The 10-episode first season was originally set to premiere on CBS All Access sometime in spring 2017, following the January launch of the streamer’s first original scripted series, Star Trek: Discovery. However, last month CBS All Access bumped Star Trek back to May and pushed the premiere of The Good Wife offshoot to February. The first episode of the spinoff will now also premiere first on CBS.
The Kings, who created the original series, also came onboard as showrunners last month. They will exec produce with Phil Alden Robinson, who co-wrote the premiere with the Kings, as well as Ridley Scott, David Zucker, Liz Glotzer, Brooke Kennedy and Alison Cross also serve as executive producers. Like the original series, CBS Television Studios will produce in association with Scott Free Productions and King Size Productions. (source)
