Who plays the preacher in Anna Pigeon?
Three episodes in, Anna Pigeon has settled into a rhythm: Tracy Spiridakos glares at the Montana backcountry, someone dies in a way that involves terrain, and the show borrows one character actor you've definitely seen before.
Episode 3, "The Preacher," which aired August 21, went big on the last part.
The short answer
The preacher is Pastor Nelson Lewis, and he's played by Roger Cross.
If that name isn't landing, the face will. Cross was Curtis Manning on 24, the CTU agent who got more done in a bulletproof vest than most people do in a lifetime. He was Boyd Bloom on Motive, Six on Dark Matter, and Donovan McAvoy on Coroner, which, not coincidentally, was created by Anna Pigeon showrunner Morwyn Brebner. He's the kind of actor Canadian TV keeps in a glass case marked "break in case of needing gravitas."
Roger Cross has played cops, soldiers, agents, and a coroner's detective. Casting him as a bank robber turned pastor is either a joke or a promotion. Possibly both.
What the preacher actually does
The episode's hook is that Nelson used to rob banks in Detroit under the nickname "the Preacher," did his time, and then, in the kind of career pivot only television allows, became an actual preacher. Cute.
Then banks in Montana start getting hit, and Anna gets suspicious that Nelson is back to his old habits and framing her fellow ranger Manny López (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz) for the new spree. It's a genre standard, the "someone from the main cast is tied to the case" episode, but it does two useful things: it gives Manny a backstory, and it gives Cross most of the screen time.
The dynamic works because Cross plays Nelson as unshakeable. Anna gets in his face; he stays level. Anna accuses; he quotes scripture without sounding like a bumper sticker. It ends up being more of a redemption story for Nelson than a Manny episode, which the Manny fans (all four of us) can grumble about later.
The show around him
For anyone just arriving:
- Anna Pigeon premiered on USA Network on August 7 and runs Fridays at 10 p.m. through October 9.
- It's based on Nevada Barr's 19-novel series about a former New York stage manager who becomes a National Park Service law-enforcement ranger after her husband's death.
- Spiridakos (Chicago P.D.) plays Anna; Ronnie Rowe is FBI agent Frederick Stanton; Tricia Helfer is Anna's sister Molly. Lea Thompson executive produces and directs.
- It shot in Calgary, which is why every wide shot looks like a screensaver.
Brebner's pitch for the whole thing is refreshingly low-concept. "I think that we're all really trying hard to stay human right now," she told TV Insider. "This intrepid woman who Tracy plays, who solves crimes in the national parks and is a full human person who is about helping the underdog, feels like a real" antidote to, you know, everything.
The first episode adapts Barr's 1993 debut Track of the Cat. Most of the rest of the season is original. That's how you get a Detroit bank robber in a pulpit in Montana.
Will he be back?
The episode leaves the door open; Nelson and Anna end up, grudgingly, on the same side. Whether Cross returns depends on the show getting a second season and Brebner deciding she needs another dose of calm baritone.
Given that she wrote him into two of her shows already, I'd say the odds are decent. The full episode cast list also includes Melanie Scrofano as Bethany López and Julian Black Antelope as Detective Wilton Fontaine, so the guest-star budget is clearly not the problem.
