EXCLUSIVE: Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction, Desperately Seeking Susan) has joined the cast of Prime Video‘s Ballard for its upcoming second season. She is set to recur as Jenny Ballard, Renée Ballard’s (Maggie Q) estranged mom.
In the Renée Ballard book series by Michael Connelly, Renée’s mom was named Makani. She left her husband and their daughter after his drowning death, which became a pivotal moment in Renée’s life. In the novels, Renée is established as being of mixed heritage, with roots in Hawaii on her father’s side. Q herself is also mixed heritage. She was born and raised in Hawaii and is of Vietnamese descent on her mother’s side, as well as having Polish and Irish ancestry on her father’s side, who is American.
While the characters’ names may differ, we understand that Jenny’s story will be similar to Makani’s, with the addition of new details surrounding her life. Jenny is described as a “damaged free spirit” who has always tried to fill a void inside, sources close to production reveal.
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Ballard, a spinoff of the popular Bosch franchise based on Connelly’s writings, follows Detective Renée Ballard as she leads the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold case division, tackling the city’s most challenging long-forgotten crimes with empathy and relentless determination.
As she peels back layers of crimes spanning decades, including a serial killer’s string of murders and a murdered John Doe, she soon uncovers a dangerous conspiracy within the LAPD. With the help of her volunteer team and retired detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), Detective Ballard navigates personal trauma, professional challenges, and life-threatening dangers to expose the truth.
The series also stars Courtney Taylor, Rebecca Field, Victoria Moroles, Amy Hill and John Carroll Lynch. Titus Welliver, who famously portrayed Harry Bosch, a mentor figure and ally of Renée, has appeared as a guest star on Season 1.
Production on Season 2 will take place in Los Angeles, thanks, in part, to the $14.84M tax credit the show received from the California Film Commission. We hear shooting will begin in early February.
As Deadline noted in an earlier story, “The well reviewed show (100% on Rotten Tomatoes) has been a strong performer, generating 2.5B minutes viewed in the U.S. from its July 9 binge release through the end of the month and charting on Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 for streaming originals over several weeks, including a #4 finish with 619M minutes viewed for the week of July 21.”
The second season of Ballard will be executive produced by Michael Connelly, Michael Alaimo, Kendall Sherwood, Henrik Bastin, Jasmine Russ, and Trish Hofmann. Theresa Snider serves as co-executive producer for Hieronymus Pictures.
Arquette has worked with world-renowned directors, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, John Sayles, Luc Besson, David Cronenberg, Hal Ashby, and Allison Anders, among others. She most recently worked on a Charli XCX-Led feature, The Moment, opposite Alexander Skarsgard. Her film credits also include Eleanor Coppola’s Love is Love is Love, Holy Lads with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Pulp Fiction, Desperately Seeking Susan, Silverado, Baby It’s You and After Hours.
On the small screen, she recently starred in Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q and Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Ratched alongside Sarah Paulson. She also had an arc of episodes on the critically acclaimed Showtime series Ray Donovan and HBO’s Lena Dunham series Girls. Arquette is repped by Artium Talent and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc.