Sunday 21 August 2016

James Purefoy cast in Netflix's version of ALTERED CARBON

Netflix has announced casting news for Altered Carbon, its cyberpunk TV series based on the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard Morgan.



Joining Joel Kinnaman, who has already been cast as Takeshi Kovacs (or rather his Earthbound "sleeve" or body), are James Purefoy, Martha Higareda, Dichen Lachman and Leonardo Nam.

James Purefoy is best-known to genre fans from his excellent turn as Mark Anthony in HBO's Rome. Since then he has starred in Blackbeard, Camelot and The Following on TV and is currently starring in Hap & Leonard for Sundance TV. His film credits include Ironclad, John Carter, Solomon Kane and the recent High-Rise.

Purefoy will be playing Laurens Bancroft, a centuries-old super rich member of the elite class known as Methuselahs. This is the kind of finely-characterised, meaty role that Purefoy revels in.

Mexican actress Martha Higareda (Royal Pains) will play police officer Kristin Ortega, whilst Dichen Lachman (Dollhouse, The 100, Agents of SHIELD) will play Reileen Kawahara, Kovacs's sister. Leonardo Nam (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Westworld) will play the young Takeshi Kovacs (the original body Kovacs was born into) in flashback sequences.

The first episode of Altered Carbon will be directed by Miguel Sapochnik (Game of Thrones) and the series is expected to debut in late 2017.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Another good choice IMO. Really looking forward to this series!

kanjisheik said...

IIRC, Reileen Kawahara is Takeshi's former client, not sister.

Adam Whitehead said...

That's what I thought, but the official press release says she's his sister, so I'm assuming it's something they're changing for the TV version.

JoshC said...

The press releases have made it look like quite a bit is being changed for TV. They cast someone as Quellcrist Falconer a month ago and she was described as "the love of Kovacs' life" in the press release. Looks like certain characters have been merged.