True Detective season two: every casting rumour to date
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Version 0 of 1. True Detective's chief innovation is to keep the energy of a short-run show alive by creating an entirely new cast of characters for each season – which has meant that the rumour mill is rotating even more energetically than usual. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's partnership is a tough act to follow, with each garnering leading actor Emmy nominations for their duo of troubled sleuths, but their success has made a berth in this stylish and brooding drama one of the most sought-after on TV. What with chatter this week about Vince Vaughn and Elisabeth Moss now being involved, here's how the gossiping has panned out over recent months. March 2014 Series creator Nic Pizzolatto says the new series will be about "hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system... I need to keep being strange." Nerdist reports that there will be multiple directors for the series, unlike season one which was wholly directed by Cary Fukunaga; various news sources have since reported the same. An unnamed – and highly speculative – source tells Hollywood Life that Brad Pitt could be cast. "Brad's name has come up many times, it's just a matter of what his other commitments are... I know everyone would be thrilled to have him onboard." Well, duh. May 2014 Pizzolatto confirms with NPR that there will be three leads in the next series, and that it will be set in California: "Not Los Angeles but some of the much lesser-known venues of California, and we're going to try to capture a certain psychosphere ambiance of the place, much like we did in Season 1." Nerdist reports that Jessica Chastain, known for her lead role in Zero Dark Thirty, has been offered one of the leads – but her representatives later deny it. Deadline reports that "unofficial breakdowns" of the characters show them modelled on Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin and Christian Bale, with Chastain as the "prototype" for the female character. They also report "early speculation" about the involvement of Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, seemingly based mostly on random blogs and Reddit threads hoping they'll get cast. June 2014 Pizzolatto says that "literally, not a single rumor about casting that has been printed anywhere has any truth to it whatsoever." July 2014 Pizzolatto admits that his earlier claim to there being three central characters has "ballooned a little bit. I would say there are four central roles." Film Divider claims to have an insight into the narrative thrust of the series. "The new mystery is to be kickstarted by the murder of Ray Caspar, City Manager of a fictional Californian city," they write. "This plot will involve a corrupt scheme to link North and South California with a high speed train, all in pursuit of profitable land ownership and lucrative federal grants." They claim there would be three detectives, two men and a woman, with issues including alcohol, gambling, anger management, cocaine addiction, and sexual exploitation. Well, it certainly sounds like True Detective. "The two scripts we have … I hate to jinx it … they are more exciting than the first season," says HBO's Michael Lombardo at a Television Critics Association press tour. The Wrap reports that Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch are in talks for two of the lead roles; Kitsch is already an HBO favourite after his winning performance in The Normal Heart. Garrett Hedlund is also mentioned as being rumoured for a part. In another story, they report that Christian Bale chose not to sign up for a role. August 2014 Deadline reports that Vince Vaughn has been approached for a lead, and that Pizzolatto wrote his part with the actor in mind, though they admit that "there are no formal negotiations yet." The Wrap reports that Elisabeth Moss, known for her portrayal of Peggy in Mad Men and Robin in Top of the Lake, is "circling" the female lead, while Michelle Forbes of The Killing is being lined up for a "key role". They report that they've obtained a plot breakdown as follows: The second season of True Detective will follow the death of Ben Caspar, the corrupt city manager of a fictional California city who's found brutally murdered amid a potentially groundbreaking transportation deal that would forever change freeway gridlock in the state. Three law enforcement officers from different cities and branches of the government are tasked with finding out who did it. They soon discover their investigation has much broader and darker implications than they initially thought. Caspar's 52-year-old corpse is found on a lonely stretch of Pacific Coast Highway near Big Sur — satanic symbols etched on his chest. It turns out he had a penchant for rough sex and may have been involved in the occult. Vaughn, they say, is being lined up for a villainous-sounding businessman who is trying to generate gains from the railway deals, while Farrell, Moss and Kitsch would play the detectives. September 2014 We crawl into a priest hole with only a season one DVD for company while we try to preserve the wonder of a great artwork arriving without fanfare, its artifice preserved. |