Mary Elizabeth Winstead Tapped to Star in New CBS Comic-Thriller ‘BrainDead’

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is ready to lead the charge against extraterrestrials in BrainDead.

The actress, who most recently starred in the short-lived A&E supernatural drama The Returned, will take on the lead role of the new series from the minds behind The Good Wife, Robert and Michelle King.

The comic-thriller will star Winstead as Laurel, the young, fresh-faced Hill staffer and daughter of a Democratic political dynasty who left Washington, D.C., who is pulled back into the family business when her brother, the senate majority whip, needs her help running his senate office. Upon returning, she learns two things: The government has stopped working, and alien spawn have come to Earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of congressmen and Hill staffers. Think of it as a cross between The Strain (but with aliens instead of vamps) and The West Wing.

“We’ve been fans of Mary going back to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but it was really her extraordinary work in Smashed and Alex of Venice that had us imagining Laurel’s lines coming out of her mouth,” said Robert and Michelle King. “She’s fantastic at mixing comedy and drama, and keeping it all vulnerable, yet real. We can’t wait to see what she does with Laurel.”

BrainDead is scheduled to head to CBS in summer of 2016.

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