ABC/Kelsey McNeal(LOS ANGELES) — Daveed Diggs has been tapped to star along Ethan Hawke in the Showtime limited series, The Good Lord Bird.
According to Deadline, black-ish co-star and Broadway veteran Diggs will play Fredrick Douglass in the pre-Civil War drama, based on James McBride’s award-winning novel of the same name. He joins Hawke, who will play abolitionist John Brown and newcomer Joshua Johnson-Lionel, who plays a young slave nicknamed Onion.
Like the book, the series is set to follow Brown’s friendship with Onion, who joins Brown’s group and takes part in the 1859 raid on an army depot in Harper’s Ferry, VA. The raid became one of the “key events leading to the Civil War.”
Douglass was said to have encouraged the raid, but found Brown’s “planning and leadership style questionable.”
This is the latest project for Diggs, who is best known for his Grammy and Tony Award-winning performance in Broadway’s Hamilton. On TV, he can be seen in Snowpiercer, The Get Down, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and others.
The Good Lord Bird, co-written by Hawke, will air as an eight-part limited event series that will premiere on Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 10 p.m. ET.
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