Small Screen: Stephanie Nigouras, Lauren Ridloff Among Cast Of ‘Accused’; Jerrod Carmichael, Patricia Williams Ink Development Deals; Mona Hammond Goes to the Upper room
Stephanie Nogueras - David Livingston / Stringer
Broadcast: Killing It’s Stephanie Nogueras and Eternals’ Lauren Ridloff are two of the three Deaf actors chosen by Marlee Matlin to star in an upcoming episode of the new Fox drama Accused. Matlin will direct Nogueras, Ridloff, and newcomer Josh Castille in an episode written by novelist and short-story writer Maile Meloy about a Deaf woman named Ava (Nogueras) who becomes a surrogate for a couple (played by Blacklist’s Megan Boone and Lock & Key’s Aaron Ashmore) and commits a crime of advocacy and protection. Ridloff and French-Canadian actor Jean-Michele Le Gal play Ava’s public defenders and Castille plays Ava’s hard-of-hearing boyfriend. Also appearing as Ava’s mother is Broadway and film star Daphne Rubin-Vega. Accused is based on the BBC’s BAFTA-winning crime anthology created in 2010 by Jimmy McGovern and is co-produced by Fox Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television for Fox’s 2022-2023 season.
Zawe Ashton has landed a lead role alongside Haley Squires and Daniel Mays in the BBC’s 30-minute adaption of Lucy Kirkwood’s play Maryland. Ashton and Squires play women both called Mary who meet at a police station in the aftermath of their respective sexual assaults. Co-directed by Kirkwood and Brian Hill, it will air on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on July 20th and is billed as an “artistic response to recent real-life events” such as the murders of British women Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, and Sabina Nessa.
Patricia Williams
Cable: Daniella Perkins, who portrays Luca’s little sister Kiela on Freeform’s Black-ish spinoff Grown-ish, has been promoted to series regular. A number of multi-talented people have also been added to the cast as recurring characters for the upcoming fifth season including model and writer Tara Raani (Yay Women), who will play Zaara, a first-generation Muslim-American sophomore at Cal U; musician Justine Skye (Already Gone) plays freshman Annika; and USC four-star cornerback Ceyair Wright (Space Jam: A New Legacy) plays football player Zeke. The new season of the series, which was co-created by Kenya Barris and Larry Wilmore and produced by ABC Signature Studios, will premiere on Wednesday, July 20th.
FX’s What We Do In The Shadows has cast Iranian-American actress Parisa Fakhri of Paramount+’s SEAL Team in a recurring role in the show’s upcoming season. Based on the 2014 mockumentary from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, the series follows vampires Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) who live together in Staten Island with their human familiar, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén). Fakhri joins the cast as Marwa, one of Nandor’s 37 wives from his days as an ancient warrior in the kingdom of Al Quolanudar, in the comedy’s fourth season which premieres on July 12th.
Comedian and producer Jerrod Carmichael has signed a two-year overall deal with HBO. He is set to develop a new comedy special, his fourth at the network, among other projects. Carmichael was the executive producer and star of the NBC comedy The Carmichael Show and executive produced the award-winning Hulu series Ramy. Nina Rosenstein, EVP of HBO Programming, calls working with Carmichael for the past ten years “a true gift” and says “we are so proud to continue this partnership.”
Patricia Williams - comedian, creator of The Ms. Pat Show, and Ms. Pat herself - has just signed a multiyear deal with BET to produce and perform in series across BET brands. Her current show, The Ms. Pat Show, which debuted in August 2021 and is based on Williams’ life detailed in her autobiography Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat, airs on BET+ and was recently confirmed for a third season. It’s described as portraying “a multi-generational African American family navigating life against the backdrop of the current culture, covering topics including non-binary pronouns, abortion, black hair, school shootings, drug addiction, racism, and child abuse.” Her previous work includes appearances on Comedy Central’s This Is Not Happening and NBC’s Last Comic Standing.
Streaming: Amazon Prime Video has released the trailer for the sci-fi series Paper Girls, based on the graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang. The show, set in Cleveland in 1988, follows four preteen newspaper delivery girls who are transported into the future and encounter the 2019 versions of themselves while becoming the targets of time-traveling police. Available on the streaming service starting July 29th, it stars Camryn Jones, Lai Nelet, Ali Wong, Sofia Rosinsky, and Fina Strazza, and is executive produced by Christopher C. Rogers, creator Stephany Folsom, Christopher Cantwell, Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Steven Prinz, and Plan B.
Another new trailer, this one for the second season of Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo’s Reservation Dogs from FX on Hulu, has been released. Written completely by Indigenous writers, Reservation Dogs is a coming-of-age series about Native American teens growing up on a reservation in Oklahoma and has won a number of awards including Best New Scripted Series and Best Ensemble Cast at the Independent Film Spirit Awards. The first two episodes of season 2 will premiere back-to-back on Wednesday, August 3.
Also on Hulu, the new drama series Black Cake has cast Ashley Thomas (Top Boy, Them) as the male lead opposite stars Mia Isaac and Adrienne Warren. Based on the book by Charmaine Wilkerson, the family drama/murder mystery comes from creator and writer of ABC’s Women Of The Movement Marissa Jo Cerar, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films, and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment, with the pilot episode set to be helmed by director Zetna Fuentes (Jane The Virgin, This Is Us). Thomas will play ocean scientist Byron Bennett, the estranged brother of Warren’s character Benny, whose mother leaves them a flash drive after her death that holds previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America.
Legendary Television and Apple TV+ have announced the lead cast for their untitled Godzilla And Titans series. The show is set in the same universe as last year’s film Godzilla Vs. Kong and will star Pachinko’s Anna Sawai as Cate, a former schoolteacher who survives Godzilla and his fellow monsters’ (known as Titans) recent destruction of San Francisco. She then travels to Japan to settle family affairs but instead uncovers a family secret. The cast also includes Ren Watabe (461 Days of Bento) and Kiersey Clemons (Zack Snyder’s Justice League) among others and is executive produced by director Matthew Shakman (WandVision), co-creators Matt Fraction (Hawkeye) and Chris Black (Star Trek: Enterprise), who also serves as showrunner, Safehouse Pictures’ Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell, and Toho Co. Ltd.’s Hiro Matsuoka and Takemasa Arita.
More casting news for AppleTV+’s Lady In The Lake series! The limited series adaptation of Laura Lippman’s novel has added five more cast members, including Irma Vep’s Byron Bowers, King Richard’s Josiah Cross, and The Upshaw’s Mike Epps. The Alma Har’el-created series was previously reported to star Natalie Portman as a housewife and mother named Maddie Schwarz who reinvents herself as an investigative journalist in 1960s Baltimore and collides with Moses Ingram’s Black progressive mother, Cleo Sherwood. Bowers, Cross, and Shaw join Noah Jupe, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Y’Lan Noel, Mikey Madison, and Brett Gelman to round out Lady In The Lake’s cast.
Five actors have been added to the cast of the Disney+ original series The Crossover, based on the 2015 Newbery Medal-winning novel by author Kwame Alexander. Darone Okolie (Winning Time), Gabriela Lopez (Teen Spirit), Joel Steingold (The Chi), Himie Freeman (The Ultimatum), and Johnny Cantley (The Originals) all have recurring roles in the basketball-focused coming-of-age series about teen-brothers Josh and Jordan Bell. The show was already announced to star Daveed Diggs, who narrates the show as an older version of Josh, along with Jalyn Hall, Amir O’Neil, Derek Luke, Skyla I’Lece, Deja Monique Cruz, and Trevor Raine Bush.
Korean/Filipino actress and singer/songwriter Ella Jay Basco have joined the cast of Nick Antosca’s upcoming limited series A Friend Of The Family on Peacock. Basco will play a recurring character on the crime series based on the true story of Jan Broberg, a young girl who was kidnapped multiple times over a period of years by family friend Robert “B” Berchtold. Basco’s previous credits include Cassandra Crain in the DC Universe movie Birds Of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) as well as appearances on Veep and Grey’s Anatomy.
Mona Hammond - Donald Maclellan
Industry: Young actor Asante Blackk, who was nominated for his second Emmy for his portrayal of Malik Hodges on NBC’s hit series This Is Us, has signed with the independently operated representation firm M88. In addition to This Is Us, Blackk appeared in Ava Duvernay’s critically-acclaimed Netflix limited series When They See Us, which earned him his first nomination, making him 2019’s youngest nominee. In addition to M88, Blackk will continue to be represented by UTA and attorney Gordon Bobb of Del Shaw Moonves.
Investment fund and asset management media company Content Partners, LLC has hired Vine Alternative Investments executive Rob Amir as senior vice president. Amir’s new role will be to oversee “augmenting” the content business’ “sourcing of new film, television, music and other entertainment intellectual property assets”. Based in Los Angeles, Content Partners owns half of the CSI franchise (with CBS) after acquiring it from Goldman Sachs in 2013. Before Vine Alternative Investments, Amir was managing director at Rizvi Traverse Management and worked for Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The U.K.’s Channel 4 is partnering with Gritty Talent, a British media company that focuses on connecting under-represented talent in the TV industry, to help independent production companies build more diverse senior teams. This is in continuation of the network’s Black To Front Project, which set new requirements for independent production companies to have more diverse off-screen talent on production teams. Gritty Talent will assist the UK broadcaster in “define where the skills gaps and talent shortages exist across the U.K. in specific genres, and they will then help to identify the suitable talent”.
Mona Hammond, who played Blossom on BBC’s long-running soap EastEnders, has passed away at the age of 91. Mona was born Mavis Chin in Jamaica to Chinese and Jamaican parents and emigrated to the UK in 1959. Hammond’s other TV acting roles included appearances on Coronation Street, The Sweeney, Desmond’s, and The Crouches but she is most celebrated for co-founding The Talawa Theatre Company, which notably reinterpreted classic plays, employing Black directors and hiring all Black casts from the Black British, Caribbean and African diaspora in the UK, earning her an OBE for services to UK drama in 2005.