ABC/Giovanni Rufino (NEW YORK) — Orange is the New Black breakout star Lorraine Toussaint is now starring in ABC’s new fall drama, Forever.
Toussaint’s character on Orange Is the New Black was a criminal named Vee, but her character on Forever is on the right side of the law.
On Forever, Toussaint plays Lt. Joanna Reece, the commanding officer of Alana de la Garza’s Detective Jo Martinez. They both work with the show’s main character, Dr. Henry Morgan — portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd — to help solve murders. Morgan is a medical examiner, but as Toussaint explains, he has a special quality that makes him invaluable to the police.
“The lead character Henry is…an immortal. He’s 300 years old. He died 300 years ago and doesn’t know why he didn’t die,” Toussaint tells ABC News Radio. “He was killed but didn’t die, and subsequently has died countless numbers of times in the last three centuries. So he’s become something of an expert on death. So flash forward, he’s now working at the morgue. He’s a forensic pathologist because, frankly, he’s an expert on death.”
While Toussaint’s character doesn’t get a lot of screen time on Forever, she tells ABC News Radio that viewers can expect to find out more about Reece in the near future.
“She’s gonna have a level of complexity as the series unfolds,” she says. “There’s some alcohol issues. There’s gonna be some interesting things to play coming down the road. But in the first…six or seven [episodes] it’s really about establishing the style of the show.”
Toussaint says she’s enjoying being part of a network TV show after starring in a Netflix series, though she recognizes that Netflix has seriously changed how viewers consume television.
“This Netflix model has really blown that glass ceiling. It’s so interesting the way we watch [TV] and the kind of global impact and the immediacy of it,” she says. “And they’ve tapped into the human psyche — that addictive gene that they have touched upon — and activated, that we all have.”
ABC’s Forever airs Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. Eastern time.
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