‘True Detective’: Carmen Ejogo to Star Opposite Mahershala Ali in Season 3

The third season of HBO anthology True Detective is beginning to take shape.

Carmen Ejogo (Selma) has been tapped to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the forthcoming cycle of the Nic Pizzolatto drama.

Season three will tell the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play the female lead, Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali (Moonlight) stars as Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.

Related Stories

Related Story

'True Detective' Season 3 Officially a Go at HBO

Ejogo will next be seen in Dan Gilroy’s Roman J. Israel, Esq., opposite Denzel Washington. She currently stars on the second season of Starz anthology The Girlfriend Experience. Her feature credits include It Comes at Night, Alien: Covenant and the upcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald. The actress is best known for her role as Coretta Scott King in Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Born to Be Blue. Ejogo is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Conway Van Gelder in the U.K.

Pizzolatto, who created True Detective, will serve as showrunner and direct alongside relative newcomer Jeremy Saulnier. Executive producers include Pizzolatto, Saulnier, Scott Stephens and season one stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, as well as original director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin, Bard Dorros and Richard Brown will also be credited as exec producers.