Krys Marshall plays women who have decided not to complain: the astronaut in For All Mankind, the agent in Paradise. Composure is her instrument, and it is at its best when the writing gives it something to hold back.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Danielle Poole in the first season of For All Mankind (2019) being handed a suit cut for a man's body, or standing in front of an instructor who is waiting for her to fail. Krys Marshall does not look for our sympathy. She takes the insult, puts it somewhere, and gets on with the job, and Jodi Balfour's Ellen Wilson does the same beside her. That is the habit: a composure that plainly costs her something, though she never lets on what.
It took a while to arrive. Marshall spent a decade in guest parts on network television, Criminal Minds (2009), How I Met Your Mother, NCIS, This Is Us, Shameless, with a run as the villain Purity in Supergirl (2018), and she has described those years herself as a journeyman's. "The preparation is what allows you to be ready when opportunity shows up quick, fast, and in a hurry," she has said, and it did: she was cast as Poole while auditioning for something else, and the part grew from recurring in the first season to main cast in the second, third and fourth, with a return as a guest in the fifth. From there to Secret Service agent Nicole Robinson in Paradise (2025), and a voice part in Toy Story 5 (2026), her second job with Andrew Stanton.
The type is now set: the composed Black professional inside an institution that was not built for her. It suits her. In For All Mankind it gave the series its best thread; our review found the first season took six episodes to find its footing and found it on the moon and in the women's programme, which is to say in her scenes and Balfour's. We were angrier on Poole's behalf than Poole ever let herself be, and that gap between our temper and her calm is where the performance lives. It is a quieter kind of acting than the men around her were doing, Joel Kinnaman saying something rude instead of what he feels, Michael Dorman grinning his way towards disaster, and it is easier to miss.
Paradise is the other case. We rated it higher, at 73, and we did so almost entirely for Sterling K. Brown; our review did not find room for Marshall at all. Robinson is written as the agent who follows the rules until she stops following them, and the second season's loose plotting and flashbacks give nobody a steady floor to stand on. That is not a complaint about her so much as a description of where the writing put its weight.
Two series, two composed women, one review that noticed and one that did not. We would like, next time, to see her given permission to be undignified: to shout, to fail badly, to be the one who makes the mistake. The stillness is proven. What it is holding back is the part we have not yet been shown.
Biography
Krys Marshall is an American actress. She trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and began her career with work in New York City, including improv comedy and regional theatre.
She is known for her role as astronaut Danielle Poole in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind (2019–), which she has described as expanding from a guest appearance into a central part across multiple seasons. Marshall also stars as Agent Nicole Robinson in the Hulu series Paradise (2025–). Earlier credits include guest roles in NCIS (2003), Supergirl (2015), This Is Us (2016), Shameless (2011) and Bull (2016). She is set to voice a character in Toy Story 5 (2026).
