Emma Laird

Emma Laird is a Scottish actress whose recent work has connected her with crime drama, gothic mystery, and historical cinema. She became widely recognized for playing Iris in Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon’s television series *Mayor of Kingstown*. The Paramount+ drama premiered in 2021 and is set in Kingstown, Michigan, a fictional company town dominated by the prison industry. The series follows the McLusky family, whose influence extends across inmates, law enforcement, politicians, and criminal organizations. Laird’s Iris enters the story through Milo Sunter, a powerful Russian gangster played by Aidan Gillen. Her character is drawn into Milo’s schemes and later becomes part of the dangerous social and criminal network surrounding Kingstown. The role requires Laird to portray someone navigating coercion, manipulation, and survival rather than a conventional heroic storyline.

In 2023, Laird appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s *A Haunting in Venice*, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel *Hallowe’en Party*. The film moves Hercule Poirot’s investigation to postwar Venice, where the retired detective attends a séance in a palazzo and becomes involved in a series of deaths. Laird plays Desdemona Holland, one of two siblings who are Balkan refugees and work at the palazzo. Her performance forms part of the film’s ensemble of suspects, which includes Branagh as Poirot, Michelle Yeoh as the medium Joyce Reynolds, Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver, and Jamie Dornan as Dr. Ferrier.

Laird also appeared in Brady Corbet’s *The Brutalist*, a 2024 historical drama centered on László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and attempts to rebuild his career in the United States. Adrien Brody plays László, while Felicity Jones plays his wife, Erzsébet, and Guy Pearce portrays Harrison Lee, a wealthy industrialist who commissions the architect. Laird plays Maggie Lee, Harrison’s daughter. The film’s focus on architecture, migration, patronage, class, and artistic control gave Laird a role within an expansive story about postwar American ambition and the cost of creating monumental work.

Across these projects, Laird has worked in productions led by established directors and performers while taking roles that place her inside tense, morally complicated worlds. Her screen career is particularly associated with characters whose circumstances are shaped by power: Iris is controlled by organized crime, Desdemona is caught inside a locked-room mystery, and Maggie belongs to a wealthy family involved in a demanding architectural project. These specific parts demonstrate the range of settings in which Laird has worked, from contemporary Michigan prisons and criminal politics to Venetian superstition and mid-century New York.