Lyndon Smith

Baptism by Network Television

Lyndon Smith was born in 1989 in the sunshine of Pensacola and decided her place was on sound stages long before finishing her studies at the University of Florida. In 2013, she landed the role that pulled her out of obscurity on the series Parenthood. She played Natalie across nineteen episodes, and that exposure taught her how the NBC machinery worked from the inside.

Television was her real school.

But she was looking for something dirtier and less gentle. In 2015, Edward Burns cast her in Public Morals because they wanted actresses who fit the look of the sixties without seeming like they were in costume. Smith stepped into the shoes of Deirdre in a world of corrupt cops and illegal betting in New York. That shoot lasted only a few months before TNT decided not to renew the project for a second season.

In 2016, she appeared in 12 episodes of Embeds. It was a minor production that flew under the radar for the general public, but it helped her get seasoned in the rhythm of political comedy. And the gamble paid off.

The Digital Streaming Era

After that project, she went looking for new challenges in fast-paced movies. In 2018, she starred in the Netflix comedy Step Sisters, where she had to learn complex dance choreography. The shoot demanded a level of physical preparation she hadn't experienced in her previous work for conventional television.

The physical effort outweighed the acting.

In 2022, she joined the Disney universe with the series National Treasure: Edge of History. She played Agent Ross and had to handle police technical jargon reminiscent of her early days with Burns. The production shot all ten episodes mainly on location in Louisiana to take advantage of the state's tax incentives.

Because in Hollywood, contracts get signed as fast as they get torn up in an editing room. Despite the technical muscle and the weight of the franchise, the series didn't get past its first batch of episodes. In 2023, the platform announced there would be no follow-up to the story of the FBI agent that Smith had built over months.

Production of the series in Louisiana had an estimated cost of 100 million dollars.