Julia Stiles—an actress arguably best known for the Bourne films, but who once had a tidy career doing indie films loosely based on Shakespeare (10 Things I Hate About You, O, the Ethan Hawke-led Hamlet)—has signed on as the lead on TNT’s latest legal drama, Guilt By Association. The series is based on a book by Marcia Clark, still best known for leading the prosecution during O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Stiles replaces Neve Campbell, who was in talks to star but dropped out before shooting started.
Stiles already made the leap from the big to small screens first with a stint as a murderer on Dexter, and then by starring in the web series Blue. In the latter Stiles played a prostitute, who left clues every week in the form of paw prints her friend would use to solve that episode’s puzzle. Or at least we’re pretty sure that’s how that show worked.
But now she’ll be putting lawbreakers behind bars, as Guilty sees Stiles serving as Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles. Naturally, she’s a D.A. who flaunts the rules, plays by her own rules, throws the rulebook out the windows, thinks rules are made to be broken, would rather ignore the rules in hell than serve in heaven, listens to Ja Rule, and, presumably, gets results, damn it.
Joining her in this separate but equally important branch of the criminal justice system is Elisabeth Röhm as a “tough-as-nails” detective, who will presumably have her character’s most personal details revealed to the audience in her final eight seconds of screen time. Also working alongside Stiles’ D.A. is prosecutor Toni LaCollette, a character that, in a surprising twist, isn’t played by Toni Collette, but rather The L Word’s Rose Rollins.