Halle Berry ‘Extant’ Role Lands Rave Reviews

Halle Berry isn’t usually the first person you think of when the subject of great acting comes up, in spite of having won an Oscar for Monster’s Ball. Thanks to Extant, however, she is earning respect again from reviewers.

Berry hasn’t had the greatest luck in film, with her larger roles usually coinciding with some of the worst films she’s been in. Catwoman, Die Another Day, and X-Men: The Last Stand were all embarrassing for the Oscar winner, and it seems she’s found new life on the smaller screen.

In Extant, Halle Berry plays a woman coming home from a 13-month solo mission in space, only to discover she’s pregnant. Adding weight to this is the knowledge that she’s infertile and the child isn’t really human. After her recent real life role of actually being pregnant, Berry was able to give the role first-hand experience to lend it believability.

There’s nothing better than going through it yourself to give you the edge when it comes to acting it out. The biggest difference is that this time she’s giving birth to the world’s first artificially intelligent humanoid. The 13-episode series could be her second positive claim to fame, making up for all of the time she spent in sub-par films.

Berry opened up on the role:

“I’m the happiest in my life when I have been pregnant, truly. So to be pregnant again on a show right after giving birth didn’t scare me at all. I thought, ‘I’m going to ace that part of this, for sure!'”

Another possible change for her is being directed by the renowned Steven Spielberg:

“A name like that, you don’t really sneeze at. I know the quality of his work and I know that he loves this sort of genre. This was a character that when I first read (the script) was so relatable to me. While I’m not an astronaut or scientist — far, far from it — I still had an understanding about the human quality of this woman and her struggle to not only find time for herself, but also to be a good mother. The fact that she’s a scientist becomes a little bit irrelevant pretty fast. It becomes very human.”

Halle Berry’s Extant airs Thursdays on CBS at 8:30 pm. What do you think of the show?

[image via blackfilm]