The Newsroom Hires Patton Oswalt and Rosemarie DeWitt After Being Sued

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Everybody’s favorite HBO drama taking a harsh look at how news should be presented to viewers – okay, so it’s the only drama that does this – will be coming back next summer and it’s time we heard who will be joining The Newsroom for the first time. You’ll be happy to hear Rosemarie DeWitt and funnyman Patton Oswalt will join the drama in roles that, quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed in. I’ll get to why in just a little bit, but before then we’ll take a look at whom they’ll be playing and how they might affect the direction the second season of The Newsroom is headed.

According to Deadline, both DeWitt and Oswalt’s characters will be wrapped up in a wrongful-termination lawsuit against Atlantis Cable News. DeWitt will portray Rebecca Halliday, the litigator hired to defend Atlantis against the charges while Oswalt will play Jonas Pfeifer, the new Vice President of Human Resources of ACN. Both actors will be attached to the new season in a recurring capacity, making this lawsuit appear to be a major storyline for Season 2, if not the major storyline, akin to the first season’s plot involving the defamation of Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy. We’ll just have to wait and see if this really is as important as it seems to be.

As for my disappointment: Season 1 had some pretty powerful moments, but they were never when the plot was concerned about anything other than the news. Everything flowed more smoothly when everyone was looking for facts, tracking down leads on a story to get the absolute truth about a situation. When we were forced to watch the drama that was unfolding behind the scenes things became much more difficult to watch. Handling the news was The Newsroom’s strength. Complicated dramatic plotlines involving relationships and work conspiracies were not. This lawsuit seems to show The Newsroom has no interest, in my mind, to improve on its weakest foundations.