Fox’s The Gifted wrapped up its first season earlier this year and it has been picked up for a second, which are all good things for fans of Marvel properties. The first season featured strong performances by the cast and told a gripping tale of a family thrown in the middle of a mutant revolution that they helped to create. Now the cast is set to add another big name in Grace Byers of Empire fame, per Deadline. Fans of Empire will know that Byers played the central antagonist to Taraji P. Henson’s character Cookie, but after being killed off at the end of last season, Byers was looking for a home and now she’s found it with The Gifted.
Grace Byers is set to play Reeva. Fox describes Reeva as “a smart, charming, authoritative, elegant, beautiful woman who is ruthless in her efforts to fight for her people. She leads an elite band of followers and has a soft spot for her new recruits, but is still capable of extreme violence in defense of her vision.” Kinda sounds like Magneto, huh? Reeva will team up with Emma Dumont’s Polaris, Percy Hynes White’s Andy Strucker and the telekinetic Frost sisters played by Skyler Samuels. One can only imagine the amount of damage they will do.
Byers was cast as Anika Calhoun on Empire in 2014. She also starred as a jazz singer named Kate in the indie film Bent. Byers married her Empire co-star, Trai Byers, at a wedding on Grand Cayman Island in 2016. She was raised on Grand Cayman Island after being born in Butler, Pennsylvania. Byers is also an accomplished writer, having written about being the hearing child of deaf parents. She speaks sign language as a result of having deaf parents.
I’ve never been an Empire guy, so I can’t speak to Byers’ performance on the show. That said, she is a fantastic choice from a casual observer’s standpoint. I know enough to know that anyone taking on Cookie has to have a handle on playing a tough and gritty character. The Gifted hasn’t had many misses since debuting and it doesn’t look like Byers is going to be their first miss. Do you like the casting? Sound off in the comments below.