Following a first season that could very well garner some Emmy love next year, Aaron Sorkin’s cable news drama The Newsroom will be mixing the cast up a bit for its sophomore season.
Season 2 of The Newsroom begins production very soon, and joining regular cast members like Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Alison Pill and Sam Waterston will be comedian and Big Fan star Patton Oswalt and Your Sister’s Sister and Promised Land actress Rosemarie DeWitt.
Deadline reports the two talents will have recurring roles in season 2, both of whom will have quite an impact on the staff of Atlantis Cable News (the fictional news network at the heart of the series). Oswalt will be seen around the office as Jonas Pfeiffer, the new Vice President of Human Resources at ACN. However, DeWitt’s role is a little more interesting. The actress will play Rebecca Halliday, a litigator hired as the defense for ACN in some sort of multi-million dollar wrongful termination lawsuit.
The character description for DeWitt might give us a hint as to one plot point that could show up in season 2. SPOILERS from here on out for season 1, so don’t read any further if you haven’t finished it.
At the end of the first season, Will (Jeff Daniels), Charlie (Sam Waterston) and Mac (Emily Mortimer) confronted Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda), owner of the Atlantis Media Group and ACN, with information that her son and ACN president Reese Lansing (Chris Messina) had been overseeing illegal phone hacking for e-mails, voicemails, text messages, etc. to get confidential information on various employees and other people. It mirrored the real-life News International phone hacking scandal, and meant that Reese would likely be fired.
There’s a chance that Reese might be taking the case to court, but considering the existences of a confession recorded during a conversation with Leona, Will, Charlie and Mac, that probably won’t happen. Perhaps another terminated employee we haven’t met comes into play, or someone has been fired in the time that may pass between the first and second seasons. We’ll have to wait and see how the new characters are integrated next year.
No word on exactly when The Newsroom returns to HBO in 2013, but we’ll keep you posted.
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