In the near future, there will be a woman president—a fictitious one, anyway. Sela Ward has officially joined the welcome (to Earth) wagon for the Independence Day sequel, currently slated for release on June 24, 2016. She’ll play President Lanford, the current commander-in-chief of these United States. This news might bum out those President Whitmore fans who thought that Bill Pullman reprising the role meant Whitmore had somehow been named Galactic Overlord after fending off an alien invasion in the first film. There’s not much other info available on President Lanford’s backstory, so we’ll have to wait and see what kind of pilot—sorry, president—she turns out to be. For now, we’ll just imagine her putting out the call to arms to a retired Whitmore, X-Presidents style.
Prior to her ID Forever (that’s really the title director Roland Emmerich is going with) casting, Ward was pretty well entrenched in TV dramas, having had series regular and guest star roles on CSI: NY, Once Again, House M.D., and Sisters. She did have a small role in 2014’s Gone Girl, but she didn’t stray too far from her small-screen roots playing a TV host.