Scarpetta Series Adapts Patricia Cornwell's Crime Saga with Nicole Kidman

TalkTeaV
4 days ago
2 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

A new whodunnit based on a bestselling crime book series heads to television.

Close-up of Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta in the Prime Video series Scarpetta. She is dressed in light blue surgical scrubs, a matching surgical cap, protective eyewear, and a white medical mask. She is looking intently toward the camera while holding a biological sample or specimen in her gloved hand, illuminated by the bright, clinical glow of overhead surgical lights in a medical examiner's lab

Image courtesy of Connie Chornuk / Prime Video

Scarpetta is coming to Prime Video on March 11, 2026, bringing Patricia Cornwell’s bestselling Kay Scarpetta novels to the screen for the first time. Developed for television by Liz Sarnoff, the forensic crime thriller follows Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner who returns to her hometown to investigate a new murder while confronting a case from 28 years earlier that still affects her career.

The series is produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Blumhouse Television in association with Blossom Films, Comet Pictures, and P and S Projects.

The character of Kay Scarpetta first appeared in Cornwell’s 1990 novel Postmortem and has since led 29 primary books, with more than 120 million copies sold worldwide. The series falls within the mystery, medical thriller, and police procedural genres. Scarpetta was loosely inspired by former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Marcella Farinelli Fierro, and in the novels, she begins her career in Richmond before later working in cities including New York and Boston.

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Image courtesy of Connie Chornuk / Prime Video

Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman stars as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the methodical forensic pathologist at the center of the story. Jamie Lee Curtis plays her sister Dorothy Farinelli, whose long-standing tension with Kay shapes much of the family dynamic. Bobby Cannavale appears as Detective Pete Marino, a blunt but loyal investigator who works closely with Scarpetta.

Simon Baker takes on the role of FBI profiler Benton Wesley, while Ariana DeBose plays Lucy Farinelli Watson, Kay’s skilled and tech-savvy niece.

The show unfolds across two timelines, shifting between Scarpetta’s early years as Chief Medical Examiner in the late 1990s and her present-day return.

A side-by-side composite of two episodic stills from Scarpetta. The left side shows Rosy McEwen as Lucy Farinelli looking pensive in the backseat of a car, with Jake Cannavale as Pete Marino visible in the driver’s seat. The right side shows McEwen as Young Kay Scarpetta and Cannavale as Young Pete Marino standing on a city street near a white police cruiser and a "Live 18 News" van at a crime scene.

Image courtesy of Connie Chornuk / Prime Video

Rosy McEwen, Amanda Righetti, Jake Cannavale, and Hunter Parrish portray younger versions of the central characters. Jake Cannavale, who plays a younger Pete Marino, is Bobby Cannavale’s real-life son.

Righetti and Baker previously starred together on The Mentalist, and Kidman and Cannavale worked together on Nine Perfect Strangers. The series also marks David Gordon Green’s first collaboration with Jamie Lee Curtis since his Halloween trilogy.

For longtime readers, the series brings decades of established characters and cases into a new format. For viewers discovering Scarpetta for the first time, it introduces one of modern crime fiction’s most recognizable forensic investigators.

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