On the heels of casting news that Deadwood's Ian McShane will be joining Showtime's Hollywood fixer / family drama series Ray Donovan, an update: Katie Holmes will also be playing a "major" guest role in the upcoming third season.

Holmes will appear as a "shrewd and chic" businesswoman named Paige, who also happens to be the daughter of billionaire producer Andrew Finney (McShane).  According to the press release about McShane's casting , Finney will be reaching out to Ray to help his family out of a dire matter.  Can we go ahead and presume that Ray and Paige are going probably going to hook up over the course of them working together?  Let's just hope it works out better for her than it did for Kate McPherson ….

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Image via Showtime

ER alum Leland Orser will also be joining the cast in a recurring role as Father Romero, a cleric investigating the execution of the pedophile priest Ray carried out in Season 1.  The incident didn't seem to have any repercussions last season, except for Frances bringing it up with Terry, citing it as a major reason why they couldn't be together (because of who Ray is, and her fear of him).

As reported previously, it will be interesting to see what kind of changes Ray Donovan goes through in its upcoming season, after the departure of showrunner/creator Ann Biderman.  The show has always teetered on the edge of becoming something really great, and certainly as a central cast that can pull it off, but it's never seemed to have a clear sense of itself of its direction.  The casting news so far, though, has been really promising as far as potential storylines go.

Production for the12-episode Ray Donovan Season 3 began January 26th in Los Angeles.

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