Hilary Swank drafted to team Yellowjackets and more casting news this week
Hilary Swank has been cast in the upcoming third season of Yellowjackets. According to Deadline, she'll be a recurring guest star with an option to bump up to a series regular should the show get renewed for a fourth season (which seems likely, given it's currently Showtime's buzziest hit, no pun intended). No details have yet been released as to who Swank will play. Given the structure of the show, she might be playing the older version of one of the teammates stranded in 1996.
Regardless of what character she's playing, Swank feels like a good fit for the show's adult cast. The older Yellowjackets (that we've met so far) are a stellar ensemble that includes Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Lauren Ambrose, and Simone Kessell. Swank is, of course, a two-time Oscar winner, but after taking some time off from Hollywood she's had more trouble getting her foot in the door of TV than her fellow prestige film actors. She tried the streaming route with Netflix's canceled-too-soon space odyssey Away and then the network route with the similarly short-lived Alaska Daily. Hopefully an established fan-favorite like Yellowjackets will be a better vehicle for Swank's talents.
Elsewhere, DC has started to round out its stable of heroes: there's a new Supergirl villain and a new Green Lantern in Kyle Chandler. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio would like Aaron Pierre (Rebel Ridge) or Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk) to play John Stewart opposite Chandler's Hal Jordan. (Damson Idris was reportedly in the mix at one point, but is no longer in contention.) This week also saw Netflix beef up its East Of Eden limited series by adding Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott, and Emerald Fennell bringing in Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi aboard her Wuthering Heights adaptation (much to the chagrin of the Internet). Check out more of the week's highlights below.
- •Speaking of Oscar-caliber female actors nabbing TV roles, Michelle Pfeiffer is going to star opposite Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning in Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Apple TV+. [via Deadline]
- •And speaking of Nicole Kidman TV projects, her Amazon Prime Video series Scarpetta added Sosie Bacon (Smile, Mare of Easttown), Amanda Righetti (Reagan, The Mentalist), Janet Montgomery (1923, New Amsterdam), Stephanie Faracy (Nobody Wants This, Uncoupled), and Mike Vogel (Sex/Life) to its recurring cast. [via Deadline]
- •Aaaaaand Kidman's Big Little Lies co-star Meryl Streep has also caught the TV bug. After clearly having a blast on Only Murders In The Building, Streep will reportedly star in a series adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. [via Variety]
- •Meanwhile, Jessica Biel will not star in Peacock's The Good Daughter, so if you are a prestige actor in search of a TV thriller, there's an opening! [via Deadline]
- •Unsurprisingly, Freddie Prinze Jr. is reprising his role as Ray Bronson in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, the latest horror legacyquel. [via Deadline]
- •Tamara Smart will play Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, in Disney+'s Percy Jackson And The Olympians' second season, marking the second time she's played Lance Reddick's on-screen daughter after Resident Evil.
- •Daveed Diggs, famous for Hamilton and of late the Snowpiercer series, has joined the cast of The Boys for its fifth and final season. Details of his role have not yet been released. [via Deadline]
- •Karan Soni (A Nice Indian Boy, Deadpool & Wolverine) will lead the horror-thriller Fade To Black, about a screenwriter who begins committing murders "in a desperate attempt to generate the IP necessary to get his movie made." He's joined by Katerina Tannenbaum (And Just Like That…, Better Call Saul), Max Carver (The Batman, The Leftovers), Rafael Casal (Blindspotting, Loki), Gavin Leatherwood (It’s What’s Inside), Joseph Lee (Beef, Searching), John Carroll Lynch (The Trial of the Chicago 7, American Horror Story), and Zosia Mamet (Flight Attendant, The Decameron).
- •As mentioned above, Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust And Bone) has been cast as the villain in the big-screen Supergirl opposite Milly Alcock. The film is reportedly an adaptation of Tom King's comic Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow, where the titular heroine helps a young alien girl track down her father's murderer. [via Deadline]
- •Another update from Nic Cage's Spider-Noir series: Karen Rodriguez (Swarm, Acapulco) has been cast as a series regular in an as-yet-unknown role. [via Variety]
- •Kathryn Bieglow's untitled Netflix film, which stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, and more, has added Kyle Allen (A Haunting in Venice), Abubakr Ali (Grendel), and Francesca Carpanini (who recently appeared in All My Sons on Broadway alongside Tracy Letts, who is also in Bigelow's film). [via Deadline]
- •Burgeoning scream queen Maika Monroe (It Follows, Longlegs) will star in a new remake of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Monroe will play the nanny character who, in the original, tries to steal another woman's child and husband after losing her own baby. [via The Hollywood Reporter]
- •Stephen Moyer of True Blood will star in and executive produce Art Detectives, which is about what it sounds like. Nina Singh (The Lazarus Project) will also star as his partner in crime solving, while Sarah Alexander (Coupling) will play a museum curator and Moyer's love interest. Larry Lamb (Gavin & Stacey) will play Moyer's father, "who just happens to be one of Britain’s most notorious forgers." [via Deadline]
- •Stephen Graham (Peaky Blinders, Young Woman And The Sea) will play Bruce Springsteen's father Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen opposite Jeremy Allen White in Deliver Me From Nowhere, which follows the making of the rocker's album Nebraska. [via Variety]