Annie Wersching, who was also known for her work on the videogame ‘The Last of Us,’ as well as her role as the Borg Queen on ‘Star Trek: Picard,’ was diagnosed with cancer in 2020.
Annie Wersching, known for her roles in the television 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 years old.
Wersching died of cancer on Sunday morning in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Her husband, Stephen Full, paid tribute to his wife and the mother of their three children in a statement.
“Today, there is a gaping hole in this family’s soul. “However, she left us the tools to fill it,” he explained. “She found wonder in the most mundane of circumstances. She did not need music to dance. But she taught us that you should not wait for adventure to find you. ‘Go look for it. It’s all over the place.’ And we will find it.”
“She would yell BYE! until we were out of earshot and into the world as I drove our boys, the true loves of her life, down the winding driveway and street,” he continued. “I can still hear the phone ringing. Goodbye, Buddy. ‘I adore you, little family…’
What was the death cause of Annie Wersching?
Wersching, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, was most recently seen in recurring roles on Star Trek: Picard, where she played the Borg Queen, and The Rookie, where she played Rosalind Dyer, a murderer who escapes from prison.
Prior to that, she appeared in multiple seasons of 24, Bosch, and Marvel’s Runaways. On 24, Wersching played Renee Walker, a Washington Field Office FBI special agent who works alongside Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer in the Day 7 and Day 8 arcs, which take place during the seventh and eighth seasons of the show. (Read her co-stars’ tributes here.)
On Bosch, she played Julia Brasher, a rookie cop in the LAPD’s Hollywood Division whose professional and personal paths cross with Harry Bosch over the first two seasons before returning for season 7 in 2021. Wersching starred in Marvel’s Runaways between 2019 and 2021, appearing in more than 30 episodes across three seasons of the Hulu series as 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.
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Her longest-running role would be as television producer Amelia Joffe in 80 episodes of General Hospital, as well as 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 becomes stranded in time.
Throughout her career, she appeared as a guest star on popular shows such as Angel, Boston Legal, Charmed, Cold Case, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Frasier, Hawaii Five-0, NCIS, Rizzoli and Isles, and Supernatural.
In 2013, she reunited with several 24 co-stars, including Sutherland, in a one-off episode of his FOX series Touch. She also reteamed with Supernatural showrunner Eric Kripke for a two-episode arc as Billy Burke’s character’s former love interest on his NBC series Revolution.
Wersching mostly worked in television, but she also did voice work for video games, most recently in Bioware’s 2019 online action RPG Anthem. She is best known for her role as Tess, a post-apocalyptic survivor and smuggling partner to the Naughty Dog game’s main character Joel Miller, in The Last of Us.
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Wersching, who was born and raised in St. Louis, grew up performing in musical theater and competitive Irish dance before attending Millikin University, where she earned a BFA in musical theatre in 1999. She lived in Chicago before touring with Anything Goes and A Christmas Carol, eventually appearing in prestigious theaters and festivals such as Chicago’s Victory Gardens, the Marriott Lincolnshire, and the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
She relocated to Los Angeles in 2001, where she continued her career as a theater actress in the Pasadena Playhouse revival of Do I Hear A Waltz? before landing her first TV appearance on Star Trek: Enterprise.
A GoFundMe page has been set up in her honor to help her family and cover funeral expenses.
Wersching’s husband, Full, and three children, Freddie, Ozzie, and Archie, survive her.
