Rupert Friend has joined the cast of Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley are already on the roll call for the Netflix project, which gets underway this week in London.
Anderson, who wrote the script and is directing, has divided the adaptation into three chapters, with Cumberbatch serving as a connective thread through each one. He will play multiple roles, including the titular Sugar.
Sources say Friend is the lead of one of the three chapters. It is unclear what roles Patel, Fiennes and Kingsley are playing.
Published in 1982, the book featured both fiction and nonfiction stories. The title tale is centered on Henry Sugar, a man who steals a book that shows him how to see through objects and predict the future. This sparks a series of misadventures that involve evading Mafia henchmen, working with a Hollywood makeup artist to craft new identities, and setting up orphanages around the world.
Friend has quietly become a reliable part of the Anderson acting repertoire, a stable of thespians the filmmaker likes to call upon time and again. Sugar marks the third Anderson film for the actor, who had a role in The French Dispatch and shot an untitled Anderson film last fall.
The actor may be best known for starring in Hitman: Agent 47 as well as his season-spanning appearances in the acclaimed series Homeland. He will soon be seen in Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Friend is repped by Grandview and Hansen Jacobson.
