The production of the upcoming limited series Lady In The Lake experienced a scare late last week, forcing shooting to be suspended. The Apple TV+ original show, which stars Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, has been filming in Baltimore, Maryland, and the police are saying that drug dealers both tried to extort members of the crew and threatened violence.
The Baltimore Banner (via The Hollywood Reporter) says that criminals tried to get the cast and crew to "clear the set" this past Friday and threatened to return and shoot someone. There was reportedly an attempt to extort $50,000 from producers, but the filmmakers declined to pay. A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said,
The leaders of the production decided to err on the side of caution and reschedule the shoot after they found another location.
Lady in the Lake is based on the novel of the same name by Laura Lippman, which was published in 2019. The story is set in 1960s Baltimore and Natalie Portman plays woman named Maddie Schwartz who reinvents her life by leaving her marriage of twenty years and getting a job as a reporter at a local newspaper after helping police in a murder investigation. While looking for a story, she learns about Cleo Sherwood (Moses Ingram), a Black woman who was missing and then found dead. Maddie becomes determined to learn about who Cleo was – though Cleo's ghost bridles against her life becoming an open book for the ambitious journalist.
Lady In The Lake is filming as Natalie Portman's follow-up to Taika Waititi's Thor: Love And Thunder, which is still playing in theaters nationwide. It marks her first time starring in a live-action series. Portman's other upcoming projects include Todd Haynes' May December with Julianne Moore and Chris Prynoski's animated Foxy Trotter.
Moses Ingram joined the cast of Lady In The Lake earlier this summer, replacing Lupita Nyong'o. She played a principal antagonist in the Star Wars Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi earlier this year, introducing the character Inquisitor Reva to the sci-fi canon. She previously had a supporting role opposite Anya Taylor Joy in the Netflix limited series The Queen's Gambit, and her feature film credits include Michael Bay's Ambulance and Joe Coen's The Tragedy Of Macbeth.
This is the second time in recent months that an upcoming television show has had to contend with crime. It was reported in July that the Chicago-based production of Justified: City Primeval had to shut down when two cars engaged in gunfire crashed through the barricades of the set. Fortunately, like the situation with Lady In The Lake, nobody was hurt.
Lady In The Lake began filming in Baltimore in April and will continue through October. AppleTV+ hasn't officially announced release plans for the limited streaming series, but the timing of the production schedule means that it's likely the episodes will premiere in 2023.
Head over to our 2022 TV Premiere Calendar to discover all of the shows on the way between now and the end of the year.
