EXCLUSIVE: Killing Eve and A Discovery Of Witches star Edward Bluemel, Dune actress Sharon Duncan-Brewster and newcomer Eddie Karanja (After Ever After) have joined Sterling K. Brown, Iola Evans and Ernest Kingsley Jr as series regulars in Hulu drama series Washington Black, we can reveal.
Hulu has ordered the sprawling nine-episode limited drama straight to series with filming due to begin next month for producer 20th Television.
The show will follow an 11-year-old boy who embarks on a globe-trotting journey of identity after fleeing a Barbados sugar plantation aboard a flying machine in the company of his master’s eccentric inventor brother.
Brit Karanja will play the ‘Young Wash’, described as “a gentle-eyed, 11-year-old boy with a dreamer’s heart. Born on the Barbados sugar plantation, a shocking death forces him to flee by taking to the skies—sending him on a path to become a globe-trotting artist, scientist and inventor…. if he can survive the heartache lurking ahead and the hunter pursuing behind.”
Fellow Brit Bluemel will play William “Billy” McGee, a character who does not exist in the novel by Esi Edugyan but was created for the limited series by Selwyn Hinds. McGee is a wealthy British businessman who relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1837. For reasons that’ll become clear in the series, he has eschewed local women and accepted an offer to marry Tanna Goff (Evans) from London, a woman with a secret that forced her to relocate to Canada. McGee’s pursuit of Goff puts him in a love triangle that pits him against titular lead, Washington Black (played when older by Kingsley Jr), a state of affairs that threatens to plunge all three of them into danger.
The third new Brit to join the series, Duncan-Brewster, will play Miss Angie, “a woman from Trinidad who has traveled to Nova Scotia to find the freedom to build something of her own. And she has—the store that bears her name, a community institution, and her own agency as the backbone of her community. But the question is whether she can make that power work within herself and re-build her heart.”
Black Panther and This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown will portray the character Medwin Harris.
Bluemel is known for TV series including Sky and BBC America’s A Discovery Of Witches, BBC’s Killing Eve and Netflix’s Sex Education. In spring, he will star in the UK version of the lauded French series Call My Agent and upcoming also has Netflix’s Jane Austen adaptation Persuasion with Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Jarvis and Henry Golding.
Duncan-Brewster is coming off a key supporting role in Warner Bros blockbuster, Dune, playing the role of Dr Liet Kynes. She also joined the cast for the upcoming Enola Holmes on Netflix and will be seen Sky drama Intergalactic. TV credits include Sex Education, Top Boy, Bad Girls and Doctor Who.
Karanja, a 14 year-old newcomer who lives in Leicester, England, made his screen debut in David Walliams’ Sky One comedy, After Ever After, playing the titular Jack in the re-imagining of the classic fairy tale Jack & the Beanstalk. We can reveal today that he will also appear in the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.
Exec producers on Washington Black are Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Sterling K. Brown under his Indian Meadows Productions banner, The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, Lindsay Williams and DJ Goldberg, Anthony Hemmingway and Jennifer Johnson. Esi Edugyan is co-producer.