A day after casting Melissa Leo to star in its drama pilot Blood Relative, Fox has added the male lead.
Tate Donovan will star with Leo in the crime drama, about brilliant, irascible genetic genealogist Louise Kelly (Leo) and the cases she helps law enforcement solve. Donovan will play Lou's brother, John, a police detective.
Blood Relative is based on a 2018 Cleveland Scene article and centers on Lou, a leading expert in genetic genealogy, the best new tool in crime scene forensics. Unfortunately, she's impossible to deal with.
Donovan's John Kelly has done everything right. Married to his high school sweetheart, with whom he has two kids, he followed in his father's footsteps and is a detective on the police force where his dad was a lieutenant. When he’s compelled to work on a case with his genius sister Lou, little does he know that their unlikely working partnership will bring to the surface demons from long ago. John will do a deep dive into their shared past, asking questions about their childhood, their father — questions he won’t be able to un-ask and that threaten to crumble the idyllic life John has built for himself.
Donovan is coming off Sundance feature Worth and recurred on CBS' MacGyver in 2019. Other recent credits include Rocketman, Amazon's The Man in the High Castle and 24: Live Another Day at Fox. He is repped by Gersh.
Blood Relative is a co-production of Paramount Television Studios, Anonymous Content and Fox entertainment. Chris Levinson (Law & Order, Tyrant) and James Renner, author of the Cleveland Scene article, write and executive produce with director Phillip Noyce (The Resident, Patriot Games) and 3 Dot Productions' Liza Chasin.
Deadline first reported the casting.
