David Krumholtz Ends Acting Break, Joins HBO’s The Trial of Louise Woodward

Two months after telling the world he was done with acting, David Krumholtz is back on a call sheet — and this time he is heading into a courtroom.

LOS ANGELES — David Krumholtz has joined the cast of HBO’s upcoming limited series The Trial of Louise Woodward, playing real-life criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate. Deadline revealed the casting on Wednesday, October 7, as Just Jared reported. The five-part series, due on HBO in 2027, is Krumholtz’s first role since the DC film Supergirl, in which he played Zor-El.

The speed of the return is the story. Back in August, Krumholtz took to Threads to say he was weighing an “indefinite break” from the business he had worked in for more than 30 years — writing that he was “frustrated, fed up, fried” with the grind of auditioning, the gulf between studios’ profits and actors’ pay, and the shrinking respect for actors in the industry, as the AV Club’s write-up of his post laid out. When the announcement blew up, he clarified on Instagram that he had never used the words “retiring” or “quitting” — he had decided to put his career “on hold,” he wrote, to focus on his family and his mental health. “My mental health is vital to my family,” he shared.

It was not hard to understand why the news landed the way it did. Krumholtz, 48, has been one of Hollywood’s most dependable character actors for three decades: Bernard the Head Elf in The Santa Clause movies, Joel Glicker in Addams Family Values, Michael Eckman in 10 Things I Hate About You, and math genius Charlie Eppes on CBS’s Numb3rs. More recently he played physicist Isidor Rabi in Oppenheimer, and his credits run from Superbad and This Is the End to The Deuce and The Plot Against America. He made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Conversations with My Father and his feature debut the next year in Life with Mickey, as Just Jared’s career rundown notes.

The series he is joining is one of HBO’s highest-profile true-crime plays. Created and written by Matthew Barry of Industry, The Trial of Louise Woodward is a five-episode limited series with Oscar winner Susanne Bier directing all five installments, per Memorable TV and ComingSoon’s Deadline-based reporting. It tells the story of the 1997 case of Louise Woodward, an 18-year-old British au pair who was accused of fatally shaking eight-month-old Matthew Eappen while working for his family in Massachusetts. She was convicted of second-degree murder, but the judge later reduced the conviction to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her to time served — letting her return to England. The case was enormous news on both sides of the Atlantic.

Krumholtz is one of four new cast members announced this week. Samantha Mathis plays Wilma Spellman, the grandmother of baby Matthew Eappen; Stephen Kunken is defense attorney Andrew Good; and Warren Brown plays Louise’s father, Gary Woodward, Memorable TV reports. They join a heavyweight ensemble: Catriona Chandler plays Louise, Joanne Froggatt plays her mother Susan, and Meghann Fahy and Sagar Radia play Deborah and Sunil Eappen, Matthew’s parents. Hugh Laurie plays Judge Hiller B. Zobel — a casting we previously covered — with Chloë Sevigny as defense attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, plus John Magaro, Jack Reynor, and Natalia Dyer.

The role itself is a piece of real legal history. Silverglate was one of Woodward’s actual defense attorneys, working alongside Barry Scheck on the team that fought the second-degree murder conviction. For Krumholtz, who spent August venting about how the business treats actors, there is a certain poetry in his comeback being a courtroom drama about a lawyer who refused to let the system steamroll his client.

For Krumholtz, the part also continues a career-long pattern: the utility player who makes everything around him better. From scene-stealing supporting turns in comedies to a key role in a Best Picture winner, he has never needed to be the lead to be the most interesting person in the scene. A five-part HBO limited series about one of the most-watched trials of the 1990s is exactly the kind of material that rewards that skill set.

For more on the series, read our Hugh Laurie casting story and our Terminal List Season 2 trailer breakdown.