For the first 100 days of filming , actress was nowhere to be found. In fact, she was the last person booked for the limited series starring as a Jewish tradwife-turned-reporter searching for her next byline in 1960s Baltimore. But the thing is: Ingram’s riveting portrayal of a missing Black woman who is believed to have been found dead in the show’s titular body of water has become the prestige drama’s breakout story.
In , which premiered July 19, Ingram plays Cleo Johnson, the protagonist and narrator guiding audiences through the mysterious muck that leads to her death. For the last seven episodes, Ingram masterfully shapeshifts between two worlds in racially divided Baltimore. From twirling in petticoats and feathered gowns as a department store window model to keeping the off-the-book accounts of a notorious club owner Shell Gordon (Wood Harris).
When she’s not juggling jobs (she even bartends at Shell’s club between shifts), Cleo’s striving for a better economic life for herself and her two sons. She begins advocating for systemic change in her community, but not everyone — namely her boss Shell — wants change. On the other side of town, Maddie Schwartz (Portman) cracks under the weight of being a good Jewish wife and mother.
Fueled by blind ambition, she runs towards a career as a reporter that she’d long abandoned. Maddie and Cleo’s lives enmesh at seemingly random times as they attempt to rewrite their circumstances. But when Cleo gets murdered, b.