Fallout: Why Moldaver Looks So Familiar
Contains spoilers for "Fallout" Season 1, Episode 8 — "The Beginning"
From the beginning, Amazon Prime's "Fallout" presents Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) as the series' ultimate villain. After all, it's hard for a character to come across as heroic when she debuts by leading a group of disguised raiders into Vault 33, slaughtering several of its residents, and abducting Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) — thus sending protagonist Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) on her quest. Then again, no one on "Fallout" is quite what they seem. From the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) to Maximus (Aaron Moten), everyone in the wasteland has their secrets, and the allegiance switch between Hank and Moldaver in Episode 8 might be the biggest surprise of all.
Since the dual revelations that Moldaver has good intentions and Hank is a mass-murdering Vault-Tec employee are essentially simultaneous, the actors playing the two characters have to be able to match each other every step of the way. Fortunately, MacLachlan has plenty of experience playing the same character as a hero and a villain from "Twin Peaks" alone, and Choudhury's extensive experience enables her to portray Moldaver's mission-minded ruthlessness while still showing the well-meaning humanity underneath. As viewers might suspect, this isn't her first time playing a crucial role in a major project. Here's a look at some of her best-known work before "Fallout."
Sarita Choudhury played Mira Berenson on Homeland
From 2011 to 2017, Sarita Choudhury appeared on Showtime's "Homeland" as Mira Berenson, Saul Berenson's (Mandy Patinkin) wife, who struggles with the demands of her heavily CIA-affiliated husband's work and his inability to have a meaningful relationship with her. While she does care for Saul, his dangerous and time-consuming job slowly strains the marriage toward its breaking point.
Choudhury's 20 appearances on the show come between Season 1 and Season 6, which means she's part of some of the best and worst "Homeland" seasons. But while the character sometimes gets mixed up in the espionage antics, her true calling is humanitarian aid, and her main arc on the series focuses on the toll decades-long spy work can take on a person's home life.
"Saul and Mira meet when they're young, and they're both ambitious and full of hopes and dreams," Choudhury told IndieWire. "And then who those two people become 35 years later... I think of my parents, and of women who are equally strong and intelligent and have the same potential trajectory as a man, but in that generation they give up a little more than a man does, that I would nowadays."
She was Minister of Interior Egeria in The Hunger Games
Fans of dystopic future fiction may recognize Sarita Choudhury from her role as Minister of Interior Egeria in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1" and "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2." Although she's decidedly on President Coriolanus Snow's side (Donald Sutherland) in both movies, she's also a voice of reason among the Capitol's higher-ups, with her attitude toward the people they rule considerably mellower than his — something Snow disapproves of.
Egeria is by no means the most important character in the two movies in which she appears, which leaves her role within the entire "Hunger Games" timeline comparatively limited. However, since the minister is an original creation for the movie series, Choudhury had a chance to own the role without being compared with a counterpart in Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" novels, a rarity within the franchise.
Choudhury was more than a match for Jeri Hogarth as Kith Lyonne on Jessica Jones
Sarita Choudhury isn't just part of the "Fallout" and "Hunger Games" universes. Thanks to her role in "Jessica Jones" Season 3, she's also part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (now that Marvel has added "Daredevil" and other Netflix shows to MCU canon). Choudhury plays Kith Lyonne, a cellist who has an extramarital affair with the domineering Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) and consequently sees her personal life careen to oblivion.
Though she's a decidedly non-powered character who largely stays away from the superheroes and villains of the show — apart from one fateful encounter with Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) — she's nevertheless one of the stronger figures on "Jessica Jones," facing an absurd number of setbacks and outright disasters but always finding ways to cope and endure.
"Jessica Jones" veteran Moss was already a big fan of Choudhury before they started filming, so she was thrilled to work with her. "I was away in Ireland and Norway, shooting Wisting, and I started to watch Homeland," Moss told Collider. "I just love her acting. So, when I got told that it would [be] her, I was just like, 'Of course, it is. Wow, I really love that actress, and she's coming.' We became really good friends, and it was such a pleasure. She's so good."
She's Seema Patel on And Just Like That...
The sequel series to "Sex and the City," "And Just Like That..." famously doesn't feature Kim Cattrall's Samantha as part of the core cast. It does, however, introduce Sarita Choudhury's stylish and confident realtor, Seema Patel, who strikes up a friendship with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and becomes a major character. On a show that otherwise struggles to capture the charm of the original series, Seema is incredibly well-received. And since she's the one who takes Carrie to Greece in the Season 2 ending of "And Just Like That..." she even plays a big part in giving Carrie a far nicer season closer than she otherwise might have had.
Since Seema is a new character with roughly the same social status and romantic situation as Samantha, it's easy to consider her a bit of a replacement figure. But Choudhury doesn't see it that way, telling W, "I was never thinking [of Seema] in terms of Samantha, or not Samantha. But because I'm the single character—Lisa Todd Wexley and all the other characters are married—that puts me in a position of already having a Samantha thing. Samantha and Seema are both ballsy, so I understand why people are having fun playing 'who's the new Samantha,' but it wouldn't have helped me to even think in those kinds of terms when preparing for the role."
Sarita Choudhury's other roles
Sarita Choudhury started her screen acting career with a pretty big bang since her first credit is Mira Nair's 1991 romantic drama "Mississippi Masala," in which she played the female lead opposite Denzel Washington. She's since appeared in many movies and TV series, slowly raising her profile over the decades. Another of her early major movie roles is Raquel Martinez in the 1998 thriller "A Perfect Murder," in which she appears alongside such names as Michael Douglas, Viggo Mortensen, and Gwyneth Paltrow. In the 2000s, she had small roles on several shows, including "Deadline," "Law & Order," and "Damages." On the movie side of things, she played Anna Ran in M. Night Shyamalan's 2006 fantasy film "Lady in the Water."
In the 2010s, Choudhury continued working steadily and internationally. Apart from her forays into the MCU, the "Hunger Games" franchise, and "Homeland," her most notable U.S. roles during this decade include Simran Verma on "The Good Wife," fertility therapist Dr. Ushma in "Gayby," Lilith on the Aaron Paul-starring cult drama "The Path," and Sophia Varma on "Blindspot." She also notably played the female lead, Zahra Hakem, in the 2016 Tom Hanks romantic dramedy "A Hologram for the King." In the 2020s, fans may have spotted her playing Anne Rees on the Hulu miniseries "Little Fires Everywhere," Vanessa Blake on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," or Mother in David Lowery's fantasy drama "The Green Knight."