New York
The take, featuring her mother, series star Mireille Enos, clearly met with her approval and she called out “Cut!”
A bit later, Vesper ran into Peter Krause, her mom’s co-star, and proudly announced she had just landed her first directing job.
“She’s precocious,” says Enos of 5-year-old Vesper, who had made the most of her visit to the set. “She wants to take over the world.”
If that’s true, little Vesper fits squarely into the ethos of The Catch, which vibrates with woman power.
For starters, it joins the female-fueled portfolio of Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, producers of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, as it inherits the latter series’ time slot, 10 p.m. EDT on Thursday, a night whose prime-time schedule Rhimes owns across the board. ( Murder has ended its season.)
Enos, in her role as Los Angeles’ top private investigator Alice Vaughan, continues the ShondaLand custom of centering its sagas on a woman who’s strong, resourceful, sexy and successful, even as she falls short of superwoman status: Alice, like Shonda heroines Meredith Grey and Olivia Pope, also has a vulnerable streak.
Spoiler alert: Read no further if you want to preserve the first of what will likely be a long line of hairpin story twists served up by The Catch.
The thing is, Alice is in love with a perfect guy, Benjamin Jones. Played by the always-appealing Krause (late of Parenthood and Six Feet Under ), Ben is rich, charming and caters to her every need. After a year of dating, he has popped the question.
But in the blink of an eye, he (along with his false identity) disappears, conning Alice out of her life savings in the process.
“Are you ready to play?” her scamming ex mocks Alice in a catch-me-if-you-can parting shot.
“She is a powerful girl on the planet,” says Enos during a phone interview. “She is feisty and energetic and playful and loving. And then this terrible thing happens that throws her on a mission: finding the man who broke her heart.”
Alice, backed with her firm’s varied but attractive team, will tackle other cases each week, but finding Mr. Right-Gone-Wrong will be Job One.
And here’s yet another twist: Despite Ben’s lifelong career as a high-end flimflammer, it’s possible he really loves her and wishes he could win her back.