EXCLUSIVE: Paola Núñez (Fire Country, The Fall of the House of Usher) has joined the series regular cast of AMC‘s Dark Winds for Season 5, currently in production in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She will play Luisa Alvarado, a lead investigator for the U.S. Attorney’s office and someone from Leaphorn’s (Zahn McClarnon) past.
The project reunites Núñez and McClarnon, her co-star in the AMC series The Son.
Based on the Leaphorn & Chee book series by Tony Hillerman, Dark Winds is set in 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley and follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn (McClarnon) of the Tribal Police as a series of seemingly unrelated crimes besiege him. The closer he digs into the truth, the more he exposes the wounds of his past. He is joined on this journey by his new deputy, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). Chee also has old scores to settle from his youth on the reservation. Together, the two men battle the forces of evil, each other, and their own demons on the path to salvation.
Season 4 focuses on the search for a missing Navajo girl, which takes Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito (Jessica Matten) from the safety of the Navajo Nation to the gritty terrain of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer with ties to organized crime.
As the show currently airs its fourth season on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT, there is no official description for Season 5.
The Season 4 cast also includes Franka Potente as Irene Vaggan; Isabel DeRoy-Olson as Billie Tsosie, a decisive and resourceful Navajo teenager who wants nothing more than the freedom to connect with her people outside of her boarding school but quickly finds herself in over her head with only her cunning and resilience keeping her alive; Chaske Spencer as Sonny, a recruiter for a Los Angeles crime ring who through his charm and menace lure young Native American men recently relocated to the city from their reservations into a life of crime; Luke Barnett as FBI Special Agent Toby Shaw who arrives searching for answers to a mystery involving one of his friends, and Titus Welliver as Dominic McNair, a ruthless crime boss who imports and exports drugs and stolen luxury goods into and out of Los Angeles. Season 4 also sees the return of A Martinez as Scarborough Police Department Acting Chief Gordo Sena.
Dark Winds is created by Graham Roland and is showrun by John Wirth, both of whom also executive produce. Additional executive producers include the late Robert Redford, George R.R. Martin, McClarnon, Chris Eyre, Tina Elmo, Jim Chory, Thomas Brady, Max Hurwitz, Vince Gerardis, and Anne Hillerman.
Núñez is currently recurring on the CBS hit series Fire Country. She previously starred in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher and was a series regular on Netflix’s Resident Evil, USA Network’s The Purge, and AMC’s The Son. On the feature side, she most recently appeared in a major supporting role in Sony Pictures’ Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Núñez is repped by Artium Talent and Vault Entertainment.