CBS All Access’ new dramatic series Strange Angel has signed up Homeland‘s Rupert Friend in a starring role. Friend joins Jack Reynor in the original drama set in the 1930s. The series was created by Mark Heyman (Black Swan, The Skeleton Twins) and is adapted from George Pendle’s novel, which was inspired by a true story.
Strange Angel will be executive produced by Mark Heyman, David DiGilio, Ridley Scott, and David W. Zucker. In addition, David Lowery (A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon) is on board to direct and executive produce.
Rupert Friend was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Peter Quinn in Showtime’s Homeland. Friend’s credits also include The Libertine, Pride & Prejudice, The Young Victoria, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Cheri, Starred Up, Hitman: Agent 47, and The Death of Stalin.
The Plot and Characters, Courtesy of CBS All Access: Jack Reynor stars in the series as Jack Parsons, a brilliant and ambitious blue-collar worker of 1930s Los Angeles who started as a janitor at a chemical factory but had fantastical dreams that led him to birth the unknown discipline of American rocketry. Along the way, he fell into a mysterious world that included sex magick rituals at night, and he became a disciple of occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons used Crowley’s teachings of self-actualization to support his unimaginable and unprecedented endeavor to the stars.
Rupert Friend will play Ernest Donovan, the enigmatic neighbor of Jack Parsons who becomes the young scientist’s tour guide into the illicit underbelly of 1930s Los Angeles. A lost soul and drifter, Donovan pulls Parsons out of his humdrum existence and into a strange new religion that encourages its followers to pursue their deepest and darkest desires as a means of bending the world to their will.
