Maria Bello Fills Helen Mirren's Detective Shoes in 'Prime Suspect' Redux for NBC

Golden Globe nominated actress Maria Bello has some big shoes to fill now that she’s landed the lead role in NBC’s American redux of Prime Suspect, a part Helen Mirren made iconic on the BBC in series throughout the 90’s and 2000’s, according to Deadline.

The show focuses on a tough female detective who not only faces off with criminals but who has to prove herself with her male colleagues.

Deadline reports that the pilot of the American remake was picked up last season but was shelved when the network had trouble casting the lead, although Bello was purportedly the prime suspect to play the role back then, so the creators got what they wanted with Bello singing on.

A seasoned television and film actress, Bello wowed viewers with a two-episode arc on Law & Order SVU this season, playing a drug addict opposite Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson. Bello has turned in gritty performances in The Cooler with William H. Macy, A History of Violence and in the recent Company Men with Tommy Lee Jones, and she had a recurring role on ER in the late 90's.

If anyone can do justice to a re-imagining of Mirren’s Jane Tennison in the original Prime Suspect series it’s Bello.

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