Anya Banerjee ’20 Stars in the Final Season of 'The Blacklist'

Acting alumna Anya Banerjee ’20 stars in the tenth and final season of The Blacklist, which premiered on Sunday, February 26, 2023. Banerjee plays Siya Malik, an operative with Britain’s M16 and the daughter of late CIA agent Meera Malik.

The Blacklist premiered in 2013 and follows the life of Raymond “Red” Reddington, played by James Spader (Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Boston Legal). Reddington is a former US Naval Intelligence officer turned high-profile criminal—one of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitives—who voluntarily surrenders after two decades of evading capture. Upon his surrender, Reddington offers the FBI his “blacklist,” a list of the world’s most dangerous criminals that he has spent years compiling, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The show’s first eight seasons focused primarily on Reddington’s partnership (and undisclosed connection to) rookie FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone, Law & Order: LA). After Boone’s departure and on-screen death, The Blacklist has shifted focus away from the partnership and onto the ensemble of the FBI task force set on tackling the blacklist. 

Siya Malik enters in the show’s final season to join that task force, determined to find out what happened to her mother, who was murdered in season one. Banerjee calls Malik “super quick-witted, funny, and skilled. There’s a lightness and vitality to her, within the darkness of her vocation.” Banerjee’s Blacklist performance marks her first U.S. television acting role. 

Anya Banerjee is a Kiwi-American actress and writer. Born in Wisconsin and raised in New Zealand, she completed a Masters in English Literature at the University of Auckland. Banerjee turned her literary research on prostitute-actresses in colonial Bengal into Apologies to the Bengali Lady, her first play. The piece was workshopped at Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University before playing at The Tank NYC and, finally, Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it received shining reviews from The Scotsman, British Theatre Guide, and The List.