Orange is the New Black‘s Pablo Schreiber will assume the role left vacant by Sean Harris in Starz’s small-screen rendition of American Gods, The Wrap has learned.
Harris, best known for Prometheus and last year’s really rather brilliant Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, was forced to pull out of the adaptation citing personal reasons just as filming of the pilot episode got underway. Now that the network has drafted in a replacement, it is Schreiber that will take point as the Mad Sweeney, a down-on-his-luck leprechaun pondering exactly where his life strayed from the beaten path.
Indeed, the Mad Sweeney is one of the many fantastical beings featured in American Gods, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s celebrated novel of the same name. Among those deities are Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), an “ex-con who becomes bodyguard and traveling partner to Mr. Wednesday,” with Game of Thrones‘ Ian McShane on board to portray the latter. Across the series, Starz has assembled a who’s who of biblical gods, who will spend time “reflecting society’s modern love of money, technology, media, celebrity and drugs.”
Michael Green and Bryan Fuller are the showrunners retooling Gaiman’s epic for television, with help from the author himself.
Also featured on the casting docket opposite Whittle, McShane and now Pablo Schreiber are Yetide Badaki as Bilquis, Bruce Langley as Technical Boy, Crispin Glover as Mr. World and Jonathan Tucker as Low Key Lyesmith.
American Gods is currently lensing in Toronto ahead of a series premiere via Starz later in 2016.