Following the end of Orphan Black in 2017, the world of television has mostly been lacking the talents of Tatiana Maslany, who used her newly flexible schedule to work on a variety of movies. She's heading back to TV for an interesting new project, signing on for a lead role in the new Perry Mason series.
Torn from the depths of movie development hell by producers Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey (where it had been attempting to spark as a starring vehicle for RDJ), it has since been retooled as an HBO series with Matthew Rhys as legal eagle Mason.
While the character is most usually known to audiences through the Raymond Burr-starring TV series, he actually first stalked the courts in Erle Stanley Gardner’s books, the first of which was published in 1933. The author went on to write 82 novels and many short stories, which revolved around Mason, secretary Della Street, private eye Paul Drake and the team’s legal nemesis, Hamilton Burger.
Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald will write and run the show, with the story here set in 1930s Los Angeles. While the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression, this city is booming. Oil! Olympic Games! Talking Pictures! Evangelical Fervor! And a child kidnapping gone very, very wrong! At this time in his life, Mason is living paycheque to paycheque as a low-rent private eye. When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.
Maslany is on to play Sister Alice, the leader of the Radiant Assembly of God, preaching three sermons a day to a hungry congregation and a radio audience that spans the country. An entertainer, politician, God’s conduit to the City of Angels, Sister Alice wields great power when she speaks, and plans to use it in ways only she can know. Sign us up!
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