In her long, varied, Oscar-winning career, one thing Diane Keaton hasn’t done is play a regular role on a TV series. She looks set to change all that, joining the cast of Paolo Sorrentino’s new show The Young Pope.
Admittedly, it’s only an eight-episode commitment, a collaboration between Sky, HBO and Canal Plus, but it’s a new project for Keaton, who has appeared in miniseries, TV movies and guest roles before, but is here playing Sister Mary, an American nun living in Vatican City.
And the show follows the early days of a fictional pope, played by Jude Law, who is born Lenny Belardo. He’s a complicated, conflicted guy, worried that his calling will mean losing those close to him and concerned about being abandoned by everyone, even God. But he’s committed to his mission of spreading the church’s word.
According to Sorrentino, who last brought us The Great Beauty and has the Michael Caine-starring Youth on the way, the series will explore faith and religion in a fresh way, including, in his words, “the clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them. The inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff. Finally, how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbour. That is what The Young Pope is about.” There’s no indication yet on when it’ll hit our screens, but we're not sure we see Pope Francis rushing to put it on his DVR.
Keaton, last seen here in The Big Wedding and And So It Goes, has worked on** Love The Coopers** and is one of the voices for Pixar’s Finding Dory, swimming our way on July 29, 2016.