Hoping to spark some renewed interested in the second season of its anthology crime series Secrets & Lies, ABC has fallen back on its favorite tactic for building mystery and devoted water cooler debate: throw Terry O’Quinn at the problem. The Lost alumni has been hired to deploy his usual blend of “suspicious and glowering” and “enigmatically charming” as John Warner, a wealthy and beloved businessman whose well-planned life is thrown into chaos by the sudden murder of his daughter-in-law.
The case will once again be investigated by Juliette Lewis’ Detective Cornell, the only returning cast member from the show’s first season. O’Quinn will also star alongside Michael Ealy from Almost Human and The Following, who will play Warner’s son, Eric, the most likely suspect in the murder.
O’Quinn last worked with ABC for the network’s 666 Park Avenue, in which the veteran actor strained mightily to convince audiences that nothing could be spookier than an apartment building located at the Street Address Of The Beast. After the cancellation of Rosemary’s Sublet, he moved on to Fox’s Gang Related, which was also canceled after a season, despite winning the 2014 award for Punniest Title Attached To A Very Serious Drama. The one-case-per-season nature of Secrets & Lies will presumably come as a nice change of pace for O’Quinn, since it means that his departure from the show in a year gets to be voluntary, instead of the way it usually seems to go these days.