GOTHAM Casts Morena Baccarin as Dr. Leslie Thompkins

You'd better start your online petition to bring in Nathan Fillion as well...

TVLine has revealed that the new Fox series Gotham has cast Morena Baccarin in the role of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, best known to Batman fans as the woman who comforted young Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered.  The role will be recurring, beginning sometime in early 2015.

According to the article, Thompkins is "a gifted and dedicated physician who was a friend of the late Thomas and Martha Wayne.  She is determined to use her skills to aid Gotham’s most in need, which currently means working at the newly opened Arkham Asylum’s Home for the Criminally Insane.  In addition to her medical skills, her coolness under pressure will serve her well as she finds herself drawn to Ben McKenzie’s James Gordon and into more and more dangerous waters."

Baccarin is best known as Inara Serra on the television series Firefly and the film Serenity, and as Jessica Brody on the Showtime series Homeland.  She also starred as Anna on the 2009-11 remake of the series V, and has voiced a number of DC Comics animated projects, including Son of Batman (as Talia al Ghul), Justice League (as Black Canary), and Batman: The Brave and the Bold (as The Cheetah).

Created by Dennis O'Neil and Dick Giordano, Dr. Leslie Thompkins first appeared in 1976's Detective Comics #457 as a inner-city doctor who was inspired by the Wayne murders to spend the rest of her life helping slum kids avoid a life of crime.  Every year on the anniversary of the murder of his parents, Batman would visit the now elderly woman in Park Row (now referred to as Crime Alley).  However, Leslie had no idea he was the same boy she had helped decades earlier.

In later years, Leslie was depicted as a close friend of Thomas Wayne, who took it upon herself to look after Wayne's son, Bruce, after the boy's parents were murdered, often acting with Alfred Pennyworth as a parental figure and guardian.  Leslie disapproved of Bruce's activities as Batman, and felt partly responsible for his transformation, fearing that somehow she failed him as a role model.  She also had been linked to Alfred romantically on more than one occasion.

Baccarin will the first actress to portray Thompkins in live-action, although the character has appeared on Batman: The Animated Series (voiced by Diana Muldaur).