True Blood’s Chris Meloni who played The Authority’s leader, Roman in Season 5 and Jurnee Smollett-Bell who played Nicole Wright in Seasons 6 and 7, have landed a roles in WGN America’s period drama Underground — which has been ordered straight to series.
The one-hour drama “follows a group of slaves who plan a daring escape from a Georgia plantation to cross 600 miles to freedom, aided along the way by a secret abolitionist couple running a station on the Underground Railroad,” according to the network. To succeed, they’ll have to “evade those tasked with bringing them back, dead or alive.”
Meloni will play the lead role of August, who is described as “a secretive mercenary walking a tightrope between survival and morality.” Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Rosalee, has been cast as a shy house slave with an powerful inner strength and courage.
Additional major roles for the series, which is set for a Spring 2016 premiere, are: Aldis Hodge (Leverage; Turn) as Noah, “a brave and clever slave on the plantation with dreams of freedom and a dangerous plan to escape”; and Jessica De Gouw (Arrow, Dracula) as Elizabeth, “a socialite who shares her husband’s abolitionist ideals.”
The project has an impressive pedigree, coming from creators/executive producers Misha Green (Sons of Anarchy) and Joe Pokaski (Heroes), plus EP Akiva Goldsman (Fringe, A Beautiful Mind, Insurgent). Anthony Hemingway (Treme, The Wire) is set to direct the series’ first two episodes.
What’s more, sources say that music superstar (and notorious speech interrupter) Kanye West is being eyed to serve as a major music contributor — though that deal has not been finalized.
source: tvline.com
