‘Underground’ Casts ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Under the Dome’ Actress As Harriet Tubman

During its freshman season, the WGN America series Underground earned critical accolades and strong ratings for its compelling, timely recreation of pre-Civil War slavery, a part of America’s past that many would rather forget. Although the show’s cast of runaway slaves, who flee from a Georgia plantation to the North via the Underground Railroad, are fictional, when the show returns for Season 2 in early 2017, it will be bringing a real historical figure to life. As the network announced today, Aisha Hinds will be joining Underground as Harriet Tubman, the iconic abolitionist who ensured that the wheels of the Underground Railroad kept turning in the face of slave owners and bounty hunters determined to throw a wrench into the works.

Hinds’ face will be immediately familiar to fans of Under the Dome, where she played L.A. attorney Carolyn Hill, who gets trapped in the small Maine town that’s beneath the titular dome. The veteran character actress has also appeared on such diverse shows as True Blood, Dollhouse and Lost. Tubman’s visage, meanwhile, will eventually grace the $20 bill; she’s set to replace Andrew Jackson on that particular piece of currency starting in 2020…just in time for Underground to potentially enter its fifth season.

Underground Season 2 will premiere in 2017 on WGN America.