Annie Wersching, an actress known for her roles in TV dramas Bosch and 24, as well as her portrayal of Leslie Dean, the mother of alien superhero Karolina on Marvel’s Runaways, has died. She was 45.
Wersching died from cancer on Sunday morning in Los Angeles, a rep for the actress told The Hollywood Reporter. In a statement, her husband Stephen Full remembered his wife and the mother of their three children.
“There is a cavernous hole in the soul of this family today. But she left us the tools to fill it,” he said. “She found wonder in the simplest moment. She didn’t require music to dance. She taught us not to wait for adventure to find you. ‘Go find it. It’s everywhere.’ And find it we shall.”
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“As I drove our boys, the true loves of her life, down the winding driveway and street, she would yell BYE! until we were out of earshot and into the world,” he continued. “I can still hear it ringing. Bye my Buddie. ‘I love you little family…'”
Wersching, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, most recently had a series of recurring roles on Star Trek: Picard, where she played the Borg Queen, as well as The Rookie, where she appeared as Rosalind Dyer, a murderer who escapes prison.
Before that, she had major roles in multiple seasons of 24, Bosch and Marvel’s Runaways. On 24, Wersching portrayed Renee Walker, a Washington Field Office FBI special agent, who teams with Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer through the Day 7 and Day 8 arcs, which play out during the series’ seventh and eighth seasons. (Read tributes from her co-stars.)
On Bosch, the actress portrayed Julia Brasher, a rookie cop in the LAPD’s Hollywood Division, whose path crosses with Harry Bosch professionally and personally across the first two seasons of the series, before she returned for season 7 in 2021. Between 2019 and 2021, Wersching starred in Marvel’s Runaways and for more than 30 episodes across three seasons of the Hulu series portrayed the mother of half-alien Karolina, in a villain-turned-ally role that initially pitted Leslie Dean against her daughter’s teen superhero group of friends.
Her longest-running role would be as television producer Amelia Joffe in 80 episodes of the daytime soap General Hospital, along with multi-episode arcs on The CW’s The Vampire Diaries — as the mother of Paul Wesley and Ian Somerholder’s leading vampires, Stefan and Damon — and NBC’s Timeless, as Emma Whitmore, a time traveler and pilot who fakes her death and become stranded in time.
Across her career, she would appear in a number of guest roles on popular shows like Angel, Boston Legal, Charmed, Cold Case, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Frasier, Hawaii Five-0, NCIS, Rizzoli and Isles and Supernatural.
In 2013, she would reunite in a one-off episode with several 24 co-stars, including Sutherland, for an episode of his FOX series Touch. She also reteamed with Supernatural showrunner Eric Kripke for a two-episode arc on his NBC series Revolution, as Billy Burke’s character’s former love interest.
While Wersching worked mostly in TV, she did voice work for video games, most recently in Bioware’s 2019 online action RPG Anthem. However, she is most notably known for her voice work in The Last of Us as Tess, a survivor of the apocalypse and smuggling partner to the Naughty Dog game’s leading character Joel Miller.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Wersching grew up performing in musical theater and competitive Irish dance before going to Millikin University, where she graduated in 1999 with a BFA in musical theatre. She resided in Chicago before touring with Anything Goes and A Christmas Carol, eventually performing in prominent theaters and festivals, including Chicago’s Victory Gardens, Marriott Lincolnshire and the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
She moved to Los Angeles in 2001, where she continued her run as a theater actress in the revival of Do I Hear A Waltz? at the Pasadena Playhouse before landing her first TV appearance on Star Trek: Enterprise.
A GoFundMe has been set up in her honor to support her family and address funeral expenses.
Wersching is survived by her husband, Full, and three children Freddie, Ozzie, and Archie.
