Where is Grace?

Landed here after I discovered that Rogue was still on the air, and was mildly curious about the current state of the show.

Agreed, but let's be honest here.. Can anyone really recall her performances in any of the movies she's been in? Don't get me wrong, I think she's a talented, gorgeous actress, but I can only pick out of a few movies and say, "Thandie Newton" was in *this movie*.

I loved her in RockNRolla, but as I'm looking at her other films, I can't seem to recall her performances in almost any of them. I have some small memory of her in MI2, and maybe a fragment in Crash, but nothing else jumps out at me as I look through her titles.

The problem for her is that she's all too often cast as eye-candy in movies where she ends up blending into the background somehow. All I really remember from MI2 (apart from how much of a drop in quality it was from the preceding chapter in the series) was Cruise's rock climbing intro, and some ridiculous fight on motor cycles near the end. I remember the scene in the Pursuit of Happyness where Will Smith's character's girlfriend goes ballistic and leaves him, but that was a minor (and, for me at least, forgettable) role (in the sense that I don't remember Thandie as being the actress who portayed Will's love interest). These examples show how she's often cast in roles where there's so much going on that distracts you from remembering her performance, or where she isn't given enough to work with to leave her mark on a movie. Then again, perhaps I'm the only person who feels this way (but I doubt it). I don't think the same can be said of anything she's been in previously.

Then we come to Rogue, where Thandie was the lead. There was no way around remembering her being there. I watched season one, and think I watched at least part (if not all) of season two, but after that.. I was sort of done watching Rogue; however, I do think that it was her role as Grace in Rogue that helped her land the part of Maeve in Westworld.


TL:DR, chicago85 is absolutely right about how her performances in Westworld will impact her career: it is a show that is on practically everyone's radar, and Thandie landed a really juicy part to play. It would be impossible for someone to forget her after seeing Westworld, and it's such a "big" show that I'm sure there will be people who are introduced to Thandie for the first time through conversation alone. I don't think the same can be said for anything she's been in previously.