With Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw aboard in the lead roles, writer Gary Ross is busy finding other cast members for his historical drama The Free State Of Jones. Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes**’ Keri Russell and House Of Cards’ Mahershala Ali have now signed up{
Ross has been developing the American Civil War drama for several years now, planning to bring to the screen the story of Newton Knight. A Mississippi man who had been a loyal Confederate recruit, he defected from the army and took a group of like-minded troops with him to create the Free State of Jones. Knight later married a slave (Mbatha-Raw’s Rachel), creating one of the first ever publicised mixed-race unions in the South, fought against the Confederates from within his new state and led a daring raid to free children who were still enslaved following the end of the conflict. Russell is set to play his ex-wife who shows back up in his life when he’s married to Rachel, with Ali as runaway slave whom knight treats as an equal.
Russell is on TV screens in excellent US drama series The Americans. Ali, meanwhile, will be back as Boggs in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (due November 20) and is once more appearing as lobbyist Remy Danton in House Of Cards’ third season, set to hit Netflix on February 27.