Annie Wersching is best known for 24 – but her career was something so rare

From her brief but brilliant turn opposite Halle Berry to stabbing then sleeping with Jack Bauer in 24, Wersching had a talent for seamlessly slotting into the machinery of a big show and making a huge impact

Annie Wersching, who died yesterday at the age of 45, belonged in the very best strata of the acting industry. Not quite a household name, Wersching was nevertheless a safe pair of hands who was able to drift into almost any show for an unspecified amount of time – sometimes just one episode, sometimes as a main character – and elevate it without even seeming to try.

In fact, so broad was Wersching’s filmography that almost everyone will remember her best for something different. Fans of The Vampire Diaries will know her as Lily Salvatore, the evil vampire who blew in during the later stages of the show in a flurry of stabbings, slapping and biting. She had a brief but important role in the Halle Berry sci-fi series Extant, as a woman committed to ridding the world of advanced technology.

This sort of thing was Wersching’s bread and butter. Give her a big, mainstream, relentlessly American show – usually a procedural so serious that it verged on self-parody – and she could be relied upon to commit herself totally to the part. It was a skill that served her well on any number of series. An episode of CSI. An episode of NCIS. Blue Bloods. Major Crimes. Cold Case. Rizzoli & Isles. The Dallas reboot. The Hawaii Five-0 reboot. In the Amazon Prime series Bosch, Wersching was able to exploit this talent for several episodes, playing a Hollywood cop who makes up the rules as she goes along and Harry Bosch’s love interest. Although her character’s arc burned out almost completely within the space of the first season, Wersching made such an impression that she kept popping up for the rest of the series.

There’s a lovely symmetry in the fact that Wersching’s screen career was bookended with Star Trek projects. Her first role, in a 2002 episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, was nothing to write home about; in the season one episode Oasis, she played a small but pivotal function as a Kantare woman who maintains a holographic reality to protect the feelings of her grieving father. But her most recent role, in Star Trek: Picard last year, was a lot meatier. Wersching played the Borg Queen and, under an impressive set of prostheses, threw the show’s entire narrative into new and ambitious territory.

But despite all this, there is only really one role that will come to define Wersching’s legacy: as 24’s Renee Walker.

To understand the importance of Renee Walker is to have to place 24 in some sort of historical context. Wersching didn’t appear until season seven, by which time 24 had expanded and mutated into a genuinely grotesque facsimile of itself. The previous season landed with an ugly thump both in terms of storytelling – witness the nuclear bomb that went off in a large California city in the morning, only to be completely forgotten about by lunchtime – and its politics. Torture had become such a go-to way to expedite the narrative that it was used relentlessly and gratuitously, and a backlash had formed.

Renee Walker was created as the antidote to that, a way of bringing 24 back down to a more human level. The season starts with Jack Bauer being hauled into a Senate hearing about the frequency of his torture, and Walker is the agent tasked with keeping him on a short leash. Jack Bauer being Jack Bauer, though, it isn’t long before he starts torturing people again, and it’s Walker’s job to look as conflicted and appalled about this as the viewers.

Eventually, though, she finds herself seduced by it, and starts torturing people herself. Again, however, this comes at a cost. Unlike Jack, she is unable to live with the consequences of her actions and becomes a fragile shell of her former self. In the following season she stabs Jack, then has sex with him and is murdered by a sniper. In the world of 24, that’s about as poetic a send-off as you get.

Wersching’s death came as a shock not only because she was so young, but because she was the sort of actor you can easily take for granted. In reality, not every performer can slot into the machinery of a big show while still making an impact, but she was able to do it seamlessly. Her career could have stretched on for decades to come.

Contributor

Stuart Heritage

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
‘I’ve never forgotten it’: the very best (and very worst) TV endings of all time
From The Sopranos’ unbeatable conclusion to the nonsensical anticlimax of Game of Thrones, here are the most memorable TV finales of all time – for varying reasons …

Chitra Ramaswamy, Scott Bryan, Phil Harrison, Kate Abbott, Stuart Heritage, Alexi Duggins, Rebecca Nicholson, Mark Lawson, Michael Hogan, Micha Frazer-Carroll and Lucy Mangan

07, Feb, 2023 @3:23 PM

Article image
Don’t stay another day: why TV doesn’t need a 24 revival
Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer was a mainstay of the golden age of television, but reboots of the franchise have been witless. Worse still, there’s now talk of another

Stuart Heritage

09, Sep, 2021 @11:00 AM

Article image
Kiefer Sutherland: ‘I said: I can do a really good Donald Sutherland for half the money’
Answering readers’ questions, the actor and musician talks about how he tried stealing a job off his father, his favourite item from Greggs and his Mickey Mouse tattoo

As told to Rich Pelley

27, Jan, 2022 @12:00 PM

Article image
'Downton Abbey is ludicrous': the biggest TV hits we've never seen – until now
Continuing our series on a year of bumper pandemic viewing, our critics finally watch the shows that had passed them by, from Downton to Twin Peaks

Ammar Kalia, Rachel Aroesti, Rebecca Nicholson, Stuart Heritage, Sasha Mistlin, Hannah J Davies and Toby Moses

23, Mar, 2021 @2:38 PM

Article image
‘Doing Friends killed our cool’ – theme tune revelations from The Sopranos to The OC and more
The Friends anthem split the Rembrandts. Alabama 3 went partying with real mobsters. And Vonda Shepard ended up starring in Ally McBeal for years. Creators of legendary theme tunes relive their highs – and lows

Michael Hogan

10, Mar, 2023 @1:00 PM

Article image
‘The end of peak television’: has the era of prestige TV just ground to a halt?
Many of the biggest shows are coming to an end, cancellations are through the roof and miniseries are on the rise. Are the days of the all-conquering television drama numbered?

David Renshaw

05, Jun, 2023 @8:00 AM

Article image
24: Legacy is already the best show of 2017. That's a guarantee
Forget Kiefer-era 24. The new trailer is a masterpiece of giddy thrills, baddies, man-bags … and the climax is a tube rolling down a hill

Stuart Heritage

17, May, 2016 @9:45 AM

Article image
The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century
Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say

Kate Abbott, Hannah J Davies, Gwilym Mumford, Phil Harrison and Jack Seale

16, Sep, 2019 @5:00 AM

Article image
Hail to the Kief! Sutherland is still TV's best action hero – even as President Dadbod
He may not be tortured terminator Jack Bauer any more, but in his post-24 reboot, Kiefer Sutherland is warmer, cuddlier – but still just as good in a crisis

Graeme Virtue

17, May, 2017 @3:43 PM

Article image
Lawmen: Bass Reeves review – this utterly distinctive western is a rare treat
This real-life tale of an enslaved man turned US marshal is a tense, thoughtful interrogation of what liberty means. Dennis Quaid and David Oyelowo put in wonderful performances

Lucy Mangan

05, Nov, 2023 @5:00 AM