Dan Stevens, Aubrey Plaza, and Jean Smart Join X-MEN TV Series LEGION
FX's upcoming X-Men TV series Legion has scored some new cast members.
THR reports that Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, The Guest), Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), and Jean Smart (Fargo, Designing Women) have been added to the cast of the mutant-based series. Here's the synopsis of the show:
Legion tells the story of David Haller. Since he was a teenager, David has struggled with mental illness. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.
In the comics, David Haller is Professor Xavier's son, which explains those voices in his head. Stevens is set to play Haller, who's described like this: "Diagnosed as schizophrenic at a young age, David is a haunted man, trying to find his way back to sanity, but he's getting tired and is about to give up when he meets the girl of his dreams."
Plaza will play David's friend Lenny, "who despite a life of drugs and alcohol abuse, knows that any day now her life is going to turn around — which gives Lenny the likeable energy of the impossible optimist despite her rough demeanor."
Smart is set for the role of Melanie, "a nurturing, demanding therapist with a sharp mind and unconventional methods." She joins fellow Fargo alum Rachel Keller, who had already been cast as the female lead. Keller is playing "Syd, a self-sufficient and street smart woman who uses her sharp and prickly demeanor to protect her soft core because even though it makes her a sucker and puts her at risk, she still believes in happily ever after."
When discussing the show at the TCAs last month, network CEO John Landgraf told reporters that the series would take place in an alternate timeline to the live-action films:
“It’s not in the continuity of those films in the sense that the current X-Men films take place in auniverse where everybody on planet Earth is aware of the existence of mutants. Legion takes place in a parallel universe, if you will, where the government is aware mutants exist but the public is not. I wouldn’t see characters moving back and forth [between the TV show and the movies] because they really are parallel universes.”
I think Hawley is a brilliant storyteller, and I can't wait to see him tackle something in the realm of X-Men, regardless of how it may or may not intersect with the live action movies. All of these actors are really good (well, from what I've seen from Keller so far, maybe she's just "good" instead of "really good"), and it should be fun to see them inhabit this world on the small screen.