Grace Byers, who played Anika Calhoun on FOX’s musical hit ‘Empire’ is staying in the FOX family by joining the cast of the X-Men spin-off ‘The Gifted’ for season two as a series regular. On ‘Empire’, Byers played Anika Calhoun, the foil for Taraji P. Henson’s Cookie for four seasons, until she was killed off at the end of season four.
‘The Gifted”s first season culminated with a growing conflict between the the Hellfire Club and the Mutant Underground. Byers is playing a minor comic book character Reeva Payge, the Black Queen of Sebastian Shaw’s Inner Circle, who will be joining forces with Lorna Dane/Polaris (Emma Dumont), the Frost sisters, Esme, Sophie and Phoebe (Skyler Samuels), and Andy (Percy Hynes White). FOX describes Reeva as “a smart, charming, authoritative, elegant, beautiful woman who is ruthless in her efforts to fight for her people,” while Marvel added, “She leads an elite band of followers and has a soft spot for her new recruits, but is still capable of extreme violence in defense of her vision.” In the comics, Reeva can create a vibration with her voice that caused dizziness and hallucinations in others. Because she is joining as a series regular, she will be playing a major role and it sounds as though she may wind up being ‘The Gifted”s major villain, at least for this season. It also looks as though she will take a special interest in Andy and Lorna/Polaris.
The rest of the cast of ‘The Gifted’ includes Stephen Moyer, Amy Acker, Sean Teale, Natalie Alyn Lind, Coby Bell, Jamie Chung and Blair Redford. In addition, Samuels has also been bumped up to series regular for her triple role as the Frost sisters.
This fall, ‘The Gifted’ moves to Tuesday nights at 8pm EST. FOX has not yet announced a date for the second season premier.
Source: Screen Rant
