Prepare to meet Olivia Pope's mom! "CSI: Miami" actress Khandi Alexander has been cast to star as Maya Lewis, Olivia's late mother on "Scandal."
According to The Hollywood Reporter Maya will appear in this week's (Nov. 7) episode in a flashback and in several other episodes throughout the season. Very little is known about Mama Pope except that she helped shape Olivia into the strong, powerful woman she is today.
Maya is hardly ever mentioned on the show but last week fans learned quite a bit about her, even though it seems like what fans know about Maya is only the tip of the iceberg. While Olivia was at dinner with her father Rowan (Joe Morton) she mentioned her mother saying that she always taught her to speak her mind.
The comment didn't sit well with Rowan who looked less than happy to have his late wife brought up in conversation. In a shocking twist, the episode ended with Olivia finding out that her mother died at the hands of President Fitz (Tony Goldwyn).
Huck (Guillermo Diaz) and Jake (Scott Foley) did a little digging into B613's past and discovered that Operation Remington was actually a cover-up for a commercial plane crashing. It was reported that the plane carrying 300 people, one of them Olivia's mom, crashed due to "mechanical errors" but in reality it was shot down by the President of the United States.
Huck and Jake also discovered that the President got his orders from Olivia's father. Foley told The Hollywood Reporter that the flashback will take viewers back to when Olivia was a little girl and Goldwyn added that Maya becomes a "major issue" in Olivia's life.
"You can only imagine what that would be like to find out that your mother did not die in the way that you thought she died," Goldwyn said. "The audience can imagine what the must be like to find out that your mother was murdered along with hundreds of other people. So the fact that her father was behind it is incomprehensible."
"Scandal" airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC. What do you think Maya Lewis knew that led to her death?
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