I Just Realized Why I Recognize '56 Days' Star Karla Souza & I Can't Believe I Didn't Catch it Sooner

I just found my new rewatch

Karla Souza 56 Days
Eric Acquaye/ZUMA Press

If you’ve browsed Prime Video lately, you might have noticed a relatively new romantic thriller quietly making its way onto the platform’s Top 10 list. The series is called 56 Days, and if you haven’t watched it yet, I’d actually recommend giving it a shot. While working my way through the episodes, though, I kept getting distracted by a familiar face in the cast.

Sure, I recognized stars Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia right away (hard to miss them). But there was another actor who looked incredibly familiar and for a while I just couldn’t place where I’d seen her before. That actor was Karla Souza and it took me a few episodes before the lightbulb finally went off.

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Courtesy of Prime

In 56 Days, Souza plays Lee Reardon, a determined Boston homicide detective investigating a gruesome murder case with a complicated chemical twist. As the investigation unfolds, her character dives deeper into a dark and tangled mystery, juggling the demands of the job with a risky subplot involving bribery and corruption.

As the eight-episode story continued, I kept wondering why Souza looked so familiar. Then it finally clicked: she previously starred in ABC’s hit legal drama thriller How to Get Away with Murder.

The series was hugely popular during its run and was part of ABC’s iconic Thursday night lineup under Shonda Rhimes, airing alongside Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. The show starred Viola Davis as Annalise Keating, a brilliant defense attorney and law professor at a prestigious Philadelphia university who, along with five of her students, becomes entangled in a complex murder plot. The series ran for six seasons from 2014 to 2020.

Souza played Laurel Castillo, one of the members of the “Keating 5.” Her character was known for being resourceful and determined. and also came with plenty of complicated baggage, thanks to her distant, wealthy father who happened to run a powerful organized crime empire. Souza was a series regular for the first five seasons and appeared in a recurring role during the sixth.

Honestly, it makes sense that it took me a minute to connect the dots. The two characters are so different that my brain wasn’t immediately linking them together. But now that I’ve realized it, I might just be overdue for a full How to Get Away with Murder rewatch.

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