Joss Whedon and his team already locked in the lead for new series The Nevers, as Laura Donnelly has been cast for a while. But with production underway on the show, we now know more about who will be joining her: Olivia Williams, James Norton, Tom Riley, Ann Skelly, Ben Chaplin, Pip Torrens, Zackary Momoh, Amy Manson, Nick Frost, Rochelle Neil, Eleanor Tomlinson and Denis O’Hare are all aboard.
Whedon is directing the first episode of the straight-to-series HBO show, which also features script work from Buffy veterans Jane Espenson and Doug Petrie. The Nevers' concept finds a gang of Victorian women learning they have unusual abilities, and "The Touched" will have to deal with relentless enemies and a mission that might just change the world.
With Donnelly as Amalia True, Williams (a Whedon alumnus thanks to Dollhouse) is playing Lavinia Bidlow, a wealthy spinster who champions the women, working alongside her younger, nerdier brother Augustus (Riley)m who is fascinated with Penance Adair (Skelly), a young Irish woman who embraces her powers even as they conflict with her beliefs.
Norton will be Hugo Swan, a pansexual posh lad who runs a secret club and has a side trade in blackmail. Chaplin is on to play detective Frank Mundi, a gruff, moral man with violent tendencies who is trying to keep order among the powerful who ignore the laws of land and the Touched, who defy the laws of physics. Then there's Torrens as Lord Massen, a peer who seeks to protect the realm from the new menace he perceives.
Doctor Horatio Cousens (Momoh), on the other hand, is just trying to survive in a world where his own ability is changing his life in ways both good and ill. Manson's playing Maladie, who was committed to an asylum by her husband when her mind was warped by her power. But despite seeming like the traditional bedlam waif, she runs a criminal gang and has a purpose. Also on the criminal side of things is Frost's Declan Orrun, AKA The Beggar King. He's happy to work with the Touched, but isn't above selling them out too. Neil is Annie Carbey, AKA Bonfire, who as her name suggests can control flames and will hire that ability out to anyone who can pay.
Tomlinson, meanwhile, is Mary Brighton, a singer with big dreams who learns that her powers will make her great in ways she couldn't predict. Finally, we have O'Hare as Dr. Edmund Hague, a gifted surgeon who uses his skills in the coldest, most brutal way possible in the name of what he sees as progress.
The series doesn't have a set premiere date yet, but we can expect it on screens next year.