With the debut of HBO's The Last of Us, the game's voice actors should be celebrating how the TV series has built on their collective performance and brought the story to a larger audience. Unfortunately, they're grieving the loss of one of their own. Tess' voice actor Annie Wersching died on Jan. 29, nearly three years after her cancer diagnosis.
Wersching was a staple of genre television series after two breakout roles in the late 2000s. The first was a six-month stint on General Hospital playing Amelia Joffe, a woman with a sinister agenda who came to destroy lives and rescue people from kidnappers. She followed that up with her Renee Walker breathing new life into 24. She also starred in the first season of Bosch on Prime Video and made dozens of guest appearances on network procedurals. Yet when it came time for the actor to really dig in and bring a character to life, it was almost always on a geeky series with magic or some other kind of sci-fi. Wersching drew on her classical training to make her fantastic characters, usually villains, feel terrifyingly real.
Annie Wersching Was Killer in Two Nathan Fillion Series
The characters Wersching played in both Castle and The Rookie were similar. Both were sadistic, quiet killers who used their charm and wit to lead the heroes on a heart-stopping adventure. In Castle, Wersching played Dr. Kelly Nieman, a prison doctor who fell in love with the show's recurring villain 3XK. Nieman turned out to be evil and was eventually taken out by Stana Katic's Kate Beckett in the best fight the Castle producers never actually showed audiences.
In The Rookie, Fillion's white knight John Nolan met Wersching's Rosalind Dyer. Dyer was also a killer; however, she was already in prison for her crimes and this time she was the one in charge. She manipulated minions on the outside, similar to how 3XK used Nieman in Castle, before she too was killed off. What made this performance a standout was that despite knowing Rosalind was evil, viewers wanted to trust and like her. Wersching played wicked so well that it was hard not to still love her.
Lily Salvatore on The Vampire Diaries Wasn't Just Any Old Ripper Vampire
The Vampire Diaries enjoyed eight seasons of fantastic fantasy storytelling. Over 18 episodes in the sixth and seventh seasons, Wersching played Lillian "Lily" Salvatore, mother to main characters Stefan and Damon Salvatore. Lily was a normal 19th Century woman who lost her humanity when she became a vampire. She was a Ripper Vampire -- one that killed brutally and indiscriminately -- yet she was mostly concerned with her family and loved ones.
Her arc reached completion after she worked to bring back her partner Julian, only to discover that he murdered her grandchild. Lily then tried to sacrifice herself to kill him, but failed. While definitely an antagonist, Lily was not a typical genre villain but a more tragic figure, especially when her expanded story from the tie-in novels was factored in. The Vampire Diaries was already a quality series but Annie Wersching made it better -- as she always did.
Annie Wersching Played a Villain Turned Hero in Marvel's Runaways
During the final days of the old Marvel Television headed by Jeph Loeb, two Marvel Cinematic Universe television series brought younger characters to Hulu. One of those shows was Marvel's Runaways, based on the hit comic of the same name by Brian K. Vaughn. Wersching portrayed Leslie Dean, the leader of PRIDE and The Church of Gibborim, two cult-like organizations that had villainous intent. However, this baddie was unlike any in Wersching's oeuvre.
In the previously mentioned roles, Wersching's characters knew they were bad people and were fine with it. Leslie was the opposite. Not only was she certain that what she was doing was good, her motivation was love for her family -- specifically her daughter Karolina Dean. By the end of the series, she had abandoned the dark side and become the "House Mom" for the Runaways. Leslie used her villain skills to help the kids save the world, even if she herself wasn't a hero.
Emma Whitmore Was as Timeless as the Show She Appeared On
Timeless was a beloved time-travel adventure cut short too soon. What made the series stand out from other time-travel fare, even the perfect 12 Monkeys on SyFy, is that "fixing" history helped the series' villains. When Wersching showed up as Emma Whitmore near the end of Season 1, the stoy really took off. There was a classic "the villain becomes the hero" switch, and thus a new villain needed to step up. As she so often did, Wersching brought her antagonist to life in a way that kept viewers guessing about her actual loyalty.
What made Emma notable was that as adept as she Wersching was at playing villainous characters, she rarely got to be in charge. Even in Runaways, Leslie answered to the weird, evil alien who fathered her daughter. Emma had no master. She was as formidable an adversary as anyone on the NBC drama, including its main villain turned antihero Garcia Flynn. Wersching played a lot of adversaries, but Emma was the worst of the lot.
Annie Wersching Entered Star Trek as a Guest Star and Left It as a Borg Queen
Wersching had a lot of experience acting on stage, but her first credited TV role came in Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1, Episode 20, "Oasis" as Liana, one of the survivors on a derelict starship. 20 years later, she returned for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, playing the Borg Queen. This was a tough role since it originated with the inimitable Alice Krige in Star Trek: First Contact. While Wersching emulated the character established by Krige, she elevated her, too. For the first time, the Borg Queen had genuine humanity.
Her scenes taunting Picard -- formerly known as Locutus of Borg -- were worth the subscription price alone. Yet Wersching's work with Allison Pill in scenes where the Queen was present only in Dr. Agnes' Jurati's thoughts was amazing. Any viewer who actually attended a swanky gala like the one in the show probably found themselves wishing they had Wersching's Borg Queen riding shotgun in their minds as well. It's easy for a Borg to be terrifying, but it's much more difficult to make one charming.
The producers of all these series were wise enough to get Wersching for more than one episode. She appeared in four dozen roles over a 20-year career, and whether it was a multi-episode part or a single hour, the people she played often became fan-favorites. Perhaps this was because Wersching was as warm, kind and generous as her villains were not. While her performance as Tess in The Last of Us is first to mind because of the HBO series, Wersching delivered multiple characters that no one will ever forget.