Matilda De Angelis has been gaining traction on screen in her native Italy for the past five years, but now, as she enters the American television fold with HBO's The Undoing, the actress has been given a shocking introduction to an even larger audience.

In the David E. Kelley series, De Angelis plays Elena Alves, a young mother who enters the group of Upper East Side private school parents—to prickly effects. She is kind, mysterious, and captivating, but she also makes Grace (Nicole Kidman), a therapist and mother heading up the school fundraiser, uncomfortable.