HBO’s untitled Alan Ball show is rounding out its cast.
The family drama has added Joe Williamson and Andy Bean to a cast toplined by Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
This 10-episode, straight-to-series drama focuses on a contemporary multiracial family: a philosophy professor (Robbins); his lawyer wife (Hunter); their three adopted children, from Somalia (Jerrika Hinton in a guest role), Vietnam (Raymond Lee) and Colombia (Daniel Zovatto); and their sole biological child (Sosie Bacon). The seemingly perfect, progressive family is in actuality harboring deep rifts. Then one of the children begins to see things others cannot. Is it mental illness or something else? The series is a tragicomic meditation on the complicated forces at work on everyone in America today.
Grey’s Anatomy and Looking alum Williamson has joined as series regular Malcolm Smith, an assistant personal trainer for the Portland women’s soccer team. Not too concerned with ambition, Malcolm is happy to go extreme mountain biking with his best friend, Duc (Raymond Lee), and be a great father to his daughter, Hailey. His interracial marriage with Ashley Bishop-Black begins to fray when his wife grows weary of being the main breadwinner in the family and calls him out on being relatively oblivious to her black experience.
Bean (Power) rounds out the cast as Henry, a mysterious free spirit who longs for a simple life outside the city, away from the noise and clamor of civilization. He lives a nomad’s life, couch-hopping and making his life up as each day comes along. When he meets Ramon (Daniel Zovatto) at the Portland cafe he works at, they quickly connect and fall in love. Henry struggles to come clean about his past and his life on the streets — the truth of which could rupture a budding romance.
Ball created the drama and will executive produce alongside his Your Face Goes Here banner topper, Peter Macdissi. The project marks the fifth collaboration for Ball with HBO and its sibling cabler, Cinemax, following Six Feet Under, True Blood and Banshee. He next exec produces the Oprah Winfrey TV movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Williamson is repped by Clear Talent Group and Justice & Ponder; Bean is with TalentWorks.
