Shortly after CBS’s seven-season legal and political drama drew to a close in May, word started spreading that protagonists Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) could be revived as the centerpieces of a new series. Leslie—who will play Lockhart’s goddaughter Maia, a young lawyer whose reputation was recently chewed up by a financial scam—is the first cast member for the spin-off who was not part of the original series.
“We’re thrilled to have Rose on board,” Robert and Michelle King, showrunners for lighter spin-off, said in a statement. “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.”
The as-yet-untitled series will debut on CBS in February before moving to the network’s streaming service CBS All Access.
