Rebecca Halliday is a recurring character on HBO series The Newsroom. She is portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden.
Biography[]
Rebecca is a litigator with the law firm Lowell-Tiller, representing Atlantis World Media in a multi-million dollar wrongful termination lawsuit brought against them by Jerry Dantana in the aftermath of their exposé on Operation: Genoa. She and her associates Ross Kessler, Mark Gage, and Ken Wineroth deposed Charlie, Will, Mack, along with the rest of the News Night staff who were involved in the nearly year long investigation and production of the Genoa story. After the deposition she sided with Leona Lansing in her decision not to accept the team's resignations and to fight Dantana's lawsuit. On the night of the 2012 Election she was attending Reese and Leona's watch party at AWM headquarters, periodically paying visits to senior staff to update them on Leona's decisions.
She also informed Don Keefer that Dantana was filing a separate lawsuit specifically against him for tortious interference. Dantana had put Don down as a reference for a job with Kickstarter, knowing that Don would be incensed by the gesture and likely to give an angry and poor reference. When someone from Kickstarter called Don to inquire about Datana, Don said Dantana was a sociopath because of the extreme actions he took with Genoa. Since Don is not qualified to make a clinical diagnosis of Dantana's mental condition, Rebecca noted those were grounds for his lawsuit. Don in turn decided to countersue Dantana for intentional affliction of emotional distress on the basis that Dantana's actions in doctoring the raw footage of the interview and the subsequent effects meet the criteria for his claim.
Later, Rebecca would represent Neal Sampat on behalf of AWM for a lawsuit brought by the United States Government for inducing a government employee to commit espionage after an anonymous NSA analyst approached Neal over the internet and provided him with thousands of highly classified documents revealing, among other things, how a public relations firm in Virginia was contracted by the CIA to disseminate propaganda in Equatorial Kundu, which lead to the deaths of 38 people including three American citizens in the subsequent riots. Rebecca deposed Neal to understand how he acquired the documents, pointing out that the initial contact and documents given were not his crime, but he asked the source for additional documents that would be especially compelling, even instructing the source how to access the government's most secure networks such as SIPRNet and JWICS. It was at this point, according to Rebecca, that Neal committed espionage.
After an FBI raid on ACN's newsroom in which they extracted all known hard drives from the premises, Rebecca negotiated a ceasefire with the Justice Department on the condition that they present themselves at the DOJ headquarters in Washington later in the week. With Neal on the run in Venezuela, the DOJ's lead attorney Barry Lasenthal questioned Charlie, Will, and Mack about the source of the leak and the whereabouts of Neal to see whether he was following their instructions. Lasenthal asserted that Neal's movements seem to suggest tradecraft and that the government is close to having a case that he's a foreign asset who intentionally committed espionage.
After Will was indicted by a federal grand jury and incarcerated for contempt for refusing to reveal the name of Neal's source, Rebecca continued to visit Will in prison to inform him on the progress of his appeal. Eventually, Mack learned that Neal's source committed suicide because she wasn't satisfied with how ACN was handling the information she leaked to them. With the source dead the DOJ's case was rendered moot, and Rebecca immediately petitioned the judge for Will's release, which was granted.
Notes[]
- Rebecca is a First Amendment lawyer who bills $1,500 per hour. She's presumably held on retainer by AWM given that she represents them in multiple lawsuits over the course of two seasons. In both cases the crimes involved ACN's relationship with the U.S. Government; Genoa being a false story about military action in the Middle East, and Neal's reception of classified material from a whistleblower inside the government.
Behind the Scenes[]
- Rebecca Halliday is a recurring character in the second and third seasons and is portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden. She is an attorney for AWM who deposes both Will and Mackenzie in the second season opener.
- Rebecca's deposition of the main characters serves as the narration mechanism to guide the audience through most of the second season as the characters involved recount the events that lead up to and followed the Genoa story.
Appearances[]
| Season 2 | ||||
| "First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers" | "The Genoa Tip" | "Willie Pete" | "Unintended Consequences" | "News Night with Will McAvoy" |
| "One Step Too Many" | "Red Team III" | "Election Night, Part I" | "Election Night, Part II" | |
| Season 3 | ||||
| "Boston" | "Run" | "Main Justice" | "Contempt" | "Oh Shenandoah" |
| "What Kind of Day Has It Been" | ||||