NEW YORK, NY.- Actor Annie Wersching, best known for her roles in positions of authority on television series like “Star Trek: Picard,” “24,” “Bosch” and “Timeless,” died Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 45.

The cause was cancer, her publicist, Craig Schneider, said in a statement. He noted that even after Wersching was diagnosed in 2020, she continued her acting work, playing the Borg Queen on the second season of “Picard,” a “Star Trek” spinoff on Paramount+, as well as serial killer Rosalind Dyer on the ABC crime series “The Rookie.”

Wersching was also known for playing Julia Brasher, a police officer on the Amazon series “Bosch,” and Emma Whitmore, an engineer, on the NBC series “Timeless.” On Fox’s “24,” about a counterterrorism team that protects the United States from potential attacks, she played FBI special agent Renee Walker, which she once called “a dream role.”

“She gets to experience so much action and do so many stunts; she is so cool,” Wersching told Alive St. Louis magazine in 2009. “Plus, I can relate to her; in real life, I’m not too much of a girly girl.”

Wersching also provided the voice for the character Tess in The Last of Us, a 2013 video game that has recently been adapted into a television series on HBO, with Anna Torv as Tess.

In an interview on the Paramount+ show “The Ready Room,” Wersching described playing the Borg Queen as “certainly a little intimidating.” She noted that she had familiarized herself with the role and those who had previously played it before going forward with her own interpretation and performance. “It’s such an iconic role,” she said. “I’m incredibly excited to have everyone see.”

Wersching was born March 28, 1977, and raised in St. Louis. Her parents, Sandy and Frank Wersching, were involved in the local arts community. Her father died when she was 12.




Wersching spent her youth competing in Irish dance with the St. Louis Celtic Stepdancers. She graduated from Crossroads College Preparatory School in 1995 and received a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, in 1999. She had intended to make a career in theater but changed her mind after she was on tour with a musical in Los Angeles and went to a live taping of the sitcom “Stark Raving Mad.”

“I thought, ‘This is the best of both worlds — they are performing like it’s theater with the audience interaction, but you are on TV,’” she told Edge magazine. “This is the dream.”

She moved to Los Angeles in 2001.

She is survived by her husband, Stephen Full, whom she married in 2009, and three children, Freddie, Ozzie and Archie Full.

“There is a cavernous hole in the soul of this family today,” Full said in a statement. “But she left us the tools to fill it. She found wonder in the simplest moment. She didn’t require music to dance. She taught us not to wait for adventure to find you.”

Full noted that whenever he and his sons left their house, Wersching would shout “Bye!” until they were out of earshot.

“I can still hear it ringing,” he added.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.