Amazon Prime Video’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has added Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a series regular role opposite John Krasinski for the upcoming third season of the series. According to Deadline, Jean-Baptiste will play the Chief of Station Elizabeth Wright in the series. Production on the third season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan does not yet have a start date, though filming is expected to begin sometime in 2021.
An Oscar nominee for Secrets and Lies, Jean-Baptiste has had an extensive career in film and television including roles in the first season of Amazon’s Homecoming, NBC’s Blindspot where she played FBI Assistant Director Bethany Mayfair, 2014’s RoboCop, and will also appear as Ruth in the upcoming Mel Gibson Santa movie, Fatman.
The addition of Jean-Baptiste is just the latest update for the series. Over a year ago, it was announced that original co-showrunner Carlton Cuse stepped away from the project and that David Scarpa had been tapped to replace him. Scarpa departed soon after with Paul Scheuring set to serve as the showrunner for the upcoming third season. However, in January 2020, Scheuring also departed the series after just a few months on the job and was replaced by Star Trek: Discovery veteran Vaun Wilmott.
In the second season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, after tracking a potentially suspicious shipment of illegal arms in the Venezuelan jungle, CIA Officer Jack Ryan (Krasinski), heads to South America to investigate. As Jack’s investigation threatens to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy, the President of Venezuela launches a counter-attack that hits home for Jack, leading him and his fellow operatives on a global mission spanning the United States, UK, Russia, and Venezuela to unravel the President’s nefarious plot and bring stability to a country on the brink of chaos.
“When you do something like this, it was a very narrow target. I realized that as good as wrote the show, if we didn’t get the right guy, the show wasn’t gonna work,” Cuse explained in a previous interview. “And you need to find a guy who’s a leading man, who is vulnerable, who has got a big brain — because that’s Jack Ryan’s superpower, is his brain — plus he’s gotta be a believable action guy, [and] we wrote the character with charm. I mean, the more characteristics you add, the shorter the list gets of guys that can do it. And John was the guy who we felt embodied everything we wanted in the character.”
The series is co-produced by Amazon Studios, Paramount Television and Skydance Television. The series was renewed for a third season in April 2019 with the second season premiering on the streaming service on October 31, 2019. The third season does not yet have an expected release date.
What do you think about Jean-Baptiste joining Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan? Are you a fan of the Amazon series? Let us know in the comments!