Hulu’s limited series Washington Black continues to add to its cast.
Game of Thrones and The Crown alum Charles Dance is the latest actor to join the drama based on Esi Edugyan’s best-selling novel. Dance will recur as James Wilde, the patriarch of a sugar plantation in 19th century Barbados.
Dance joins a cast that also features Ernest Kingsley Jr. in the title role, Sterling K. Brown (who also executive produces), Eddie Karanja, Lucifer star Tom Ellis, Iola Evans, Edward Bluemel, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Rupert Graves and Shaunette Renée Wilson.
Washington Black follows an 11-year-old boy (Kingsley) who lives on the sugar plantation. He flees after a shocking death threatens to upend his life and comes under the wing of Medwin Harris (Brown), who traveled the world after a traumatic childhood as a Black refugee in Nova Scotia. Now, as the de facto Mayor of Black Halifax, Medwin prioritizes the community over everything except his young protégé.
Dance’s character, the father of Erasmus and Titch (Ellis) Wilde, is described as an esteemed scientist and inventor and the shadow that looms over the whole story, bearing down with the enormous weight of patriarchy, empire and duty. He fights to give himself permission to love the way he must while reckoning with his failings as a father.
Dance played Tywin Lannister on HBO’s megahit Game of Thrones and earned the most recent of his four Emmy nominations for guest starring as Lord Mountbatten on Netflix’s The Crown. Other recent credits include Mank and The King’s Man; Dance also has Netflix’s Sandman, based on Neil Gaiman’s comic, and Starz’s The Serpent Queen on deck.
Washington Black began production earlier this month in Iceland and is slated to film in Nova Scotia and Mexico as well. Disney’s 20th Television is producing. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (The Twilight Zone) serves as showrunner and executive produces with Brown, via his Indian Meadows Productions; writer Jennifer Johnson; The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, Lindsay Williams and DJ Goldberg; Anthony Hemingway; and directors Wanuri Kahiu and Mo Marable. Edugyan is a co-producer.
