Why Mason From Lioness Looks So Familiar

A fixture of the situation room in "Lioness," White House Chief of Staff Mason is played by American-British actress Jennifer Ehle, who you may recognize from a long list of movies and TV shows. She's perhaps best known for her BAFTA-winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries, a critically acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's famous novel. Ehle featured in another celebrated project in 2010: the best picture-winning historical drama "The King's Speech." She plays Myrtle Logue, the wife of King George VI's (Colin Firth) speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). 

Other prominent big screen roles include the part of Dr. Ally Hextall in "Contagion" and Carla May Wilks — the mother of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) — in the "Fifty Shades" movies. Those who enjoy female centric political thrillers like "Lioness" have probably seen "Zero Dark Thirty," Kathryn Bigelow's best picture-nominated film about the international manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the years after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Ehle plays protagonist Maya's (Jessica Chastain) CIA associate Jessica Karley.

Ehle's TV career outside of "Lioness" has flourished in recent years, with the North Carolina-born actress landing roles in three noteworthy shows. She appeared in Prime Video's psychosexual thriller series "Dead Ringers" as the cutthroat investor Rebecca Parker in 2023, and she had a four-episode stint as Chief Meredith Bonner in "Law & Order: Organized Crime" in 2024. In 2026, Ehle portrayed the titular character's mother Gabriella in AMC's "The Vampire Lestat," based on Anne Rice's 1985 novel of the same name.

"Lioness" creator Taylor Sheridan's many TV shows often enlist the same actors multiple times, and Jennifer Ehle is one of them: Before she debuted as Mason in "Lioness," Ehle enjoyed a four-episode stint in Sheridan's "Yellowstone" prequel series "1923." She appeared in Season 1 as the Irish Catholic nun Sister Mary, an abusive teacher at the North Dakota Boarding School for Native Americans working under the even more sinister Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché). In her fairly limited screen time, Ehle's Sister Mary conveys the horrid nature of the real-life residential schools the U.S. federal government forced Native American children to attend from the mid-19th to the mid-20 century.

The Sister Mary character serves as a sobering reminder of the dark parts of U.S. history, particularly through her torment of Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves). Speaking to Slash Film about her "1923" role, Ehle said that Sister Mary was likely psychologically damaged from her own mistreatment in childhood. "Presumably, she was forced to not speak her native language by the British. And now she's in a very abusive religious community," Ehle said. "I don't want to ever sound like I'm apologizing. But one of the wonderful things about the way Taylor writes is nothing is ever just clear cut. He always turns the prism a little bit so that you can see the history of why things are happening."