Annalise Keating

Annalise Keating
How to Get Away with Murder character
Viola Davis as Annalise in the second season.
First appearance	"Pilot" (1.01) (September 25, 2014)
Created by	Peter Nowalk
Portrayed by	Viola Davis
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Defense attorney Professor
Title	Professor Annalise Keating, Esq.
Family	Ophelia Harkness (mother) Mac Harkness (father) Celestine Harkness (sister) Thelonius Harkness (brother)
Spouse(s)	Sam Keating (deceased husband)
Significant other(s)	Nate Lahey (lover) Eve Rothlo (lover)
Children	Sam Keating, Jr. (deceased son)<
Relatives	Clyde (deceased maternal uncle)
Nationality	American
Birth name	Anna Mae Harkness
Status	Alive

Annalise Keating (née Harkness, born Anna Mae) is a fictional character created in 2014 by Peter Nowalk. It was developed for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) legal drama mystery television series How to Get Away with Murder. Keating is a high-profile Philadelphia-based defense attorney and law professor at the fictional Middleton University.

On February 25, 2014, it was announced that Shonda Rhimes had cast Viola Davis in the show's leading role of Professor Annalise Keating.

Early in the series, Annalise was reported as a self-sufficient and confident woman. She seemed to have a perfect life and was respected for being a great lawyer and a great law professor, whom her students both fear and admire. Her emotional behavior has been changing according to the occurrence of the story events. After being involved in the murder plot with four of her students, Annalise became a woman with two faces; one of them, a strong woman, was publicly displayed, while the other, a sentimental and destroyed human being, was shown to Nate, her lover.

Keating was the wife of the psychologist Sam Keating (Tom Verica). Their relationship lasted for 20 years, until Annalise later found out that he was cheating on her with a college student, Lila Stangard, whose murder was the center of the murder investigation in season one. Despite the affair, Annalise stayed with Sam until the day he almost attacked her. The two fought and she left. Later that night, Sam was found dead. Although she was suspected, Annalise didn't murder him; the real guilty party was Wesley Gibbins (Alfred Enoch), one of Annalise's students and her most intimate ally.

While Sam was cheating on Annalise with Lila, Annalise was cheating on Sam with the detective Nate Lahey (Billy Brown). He had an intimate and had romantic relationship with Annalise. Meanwhile, Nate's wife, Nia, was hospitalized with stage 4 cancer. Nia was aware of Nate's relationship with Annalise. When Nia dies, in the second season, Nate gets angry and breaks up with Annalise, stating that he didn't had enough time to take care of Nia because Annalise framed him for Sam's murder.