Hulu is poised to explore the Syrian Civil War.
The Disney-backed streamer has handed out an eight-episode, straight-to-series order for drama Fertile Crescent, starring James Purefoy (Altered Carbon, The Following, Rome).
Fertile Crescent explores the Syrian civil war through the eyes of Antoine, a young French man, in search for his estranged, presumed-dead sister. While unraveling the mystery, Antoine joins forces with a unit of Kurdish female fighters, fierce women and ISIS’ biggest nightmare, and travels with them in ISIS-occupied territory. Antoine’s journey crosses paths with adventurers and anarchists, spies and innocent victims, and provides a unique look on the tragic events in Syria, and the way they affect the entire world. Félix Moati (The French Dispatch), Mélanie Thierry (La Douleur), Souheila Yacoub, Joe Ben Ayed, James Krishna Floyd, Dean Ridge, Julia Faure, François Caron and Céline Samie round out the cast. Read the rest of this entry »
“I DO think you go through various phases in your career,” James Purefoy is telling me. “British actors oftentimes go through the same phases. There’s the frilly shirt phase, there’s the big sword phase, there’s the bad guy phase and then there’s the character actor phase, isn’t there?”
Purefoy, now in his fifties, has done all of them. He’s been a frilly-shirted guy (in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mansfield Park back in the 1990s and Vanity Fair back in 2004), the guy with the big sword (in Solomon Kane and Ironclad and, perhaps most memorably playing Mark Anthony, sometimes naked, in the TV series Rome) and, yes, he’s been the bad guy , a very bad guy, a serial killer in fact, in the TV series The Following.
So, what does that leave? Well, oilskins, apparently. Purefoy can be found in your local cinema today playing a Cornish fisherman in new movie Fisherman’s Friends, a wannabe crowd-pleaser that tells the story of the eponymous male singing group from Port Isaac who signed a record deal in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
James Purefoy is signing up for some Sex Education: The Rome and The Following star has joined the cast of the upcoming Netflix dramedy starring Gillian Anderson, TVLine has confirmed.
Purefoy will play Remi, the ex-husband of Anderson’s sex therapist Jean and the father of her son Otis, played by Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game, Hugo). Purefoy will appear in several episodes, but not as a series regular; filming is currently underway in the UK.
Anderson broke the news herself with a tweet captioned “Happy-ish ex-families” that included a photo of her with Purefoy and Butterfield:
A native of England, Purefoy broke out with U.S. audiences with his role as Mark Antony on HBO’s Rome. He went on to play murderous cult leader Joe Carroll on the Fox thriller The Following and starred alongside Michael K. Williams in Sundance’s Hap & Leonard. He has a history with Netflix, too: He played wealthy murder victim Laurens Bancroft in the sci-fi drama Altered Carbon, which debuted earlier this year.
Source: TV Line
A new season of Hap and Leonard starts on SundanceTV March 7. The third season is inspired by the third novel in the series by Joe R. Lansdale, The Two-Bear Mambo. There are six episodes in the season.
The show is about the friendship between a couple peculiar guys in East Texas. Hap Collins, played by James Purefoy, is a straight white lothario, and Leonard Pine, played by Michael Kenneth Williams, is a gay black man.
Williams, who played Omar Little on The Wire, calls the characters “walking contradictions.” Read the rest of this entry »
Come Wednesday, March 7 on SundanceTV, Hap and Leonard season 3 will officially arrive! This season is subtitled “The Two-Bear Mambo,” and it is going to serve both as further exploration into the Hap and Leonard friendship as well as a reflection on modern-day issues. Over the course of this season you will see the title characters head to Grovetown, a place riddled with racism and the Ku Klux Klan. What they run into there will be so much more than either one of them ever bargained for.
In leading up to the start of the new season we were fortunate enough, for the second straight season, to do an interview with James Purefoy discussing some of what appeals to him about this season, the topical nature of the story, and also how he would prefer to film the next season of the series if given an opportunity.
CarterMatt – What made you excited about the story of The Two-Bear Mambo in the first place? Read the rest of this entry »
Women don’t fare well in Netflix’s Altered Carbon.
The series, a loud, visually stunning sci-fi set in a distant future where human consciousness can be transferred between bodies, sees the female form brutally beaten, maimed and laid bare as par for the course. The early reviews haven’t been kind:
“This show tackles race, gender, and class with all the subtlety of a blowtorch,” Entertainment Weekly said. Read the rest of this entry »
Feb. 2 (UPI) — The Following alum James Purefoy says his new dystopian drama Altered Carbon is “a warning to us in the present.”
Now streaming on Netflix, the 10-part adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s novel is about a futuristic society in which human consciousness may be transferred between bodies, meaning the wealthy can essentially live forever by adopting another “sleeve” when the old one wears out. The series co-stars Renee Elise Goldsberry, Will Yun Lee, Martha Higareda and Ato Essandoh.
Asked by UPI at a roundtable interview Tuesday with reporters what appealed to him about telling this story, Purefoy replied: “I think working on anything where you are talking about a dystopian future on a show, which is very clearly a warning to us in the present. Read the rest of this entry »
Rome and The Following star James Purefoy appeared on Good Morning Britain today (January 18).
And nobody seemed more excited than Ben Shephard as he interviewed the actor with co-hosts Kate Garraway, Richard Arnold and Susanna Reid.
During the chat, the presenter couldn’t resist asking him about what it’s like to get completely naked for the camera in certain scenes.
“I have a huge admiration for you,” Ben explained. “I’m not scared of getting naked but it’s just in that sort of environment.” Read the rest of this entry »
“Live forever, in the body you deserve.” Netflix has set a premiere date for Altered Carbon, its futuristic sci-fi series based on Richard K. Morgan’s cyberpunk novel. The series from Skydance Television starts streaming Friday, February 2. Check out a new teaser above that plays as an ad for Psychasec, the company behind the body transfers.
The Killing alum Jeol Kinnaman stars as Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite interstellar warrior known as an Envoy who has been imprisoned for 300 years and is downloaded into a future he’d tried to stop. Society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitized, human bodies are interchangeable, and death is no longer permanent. Kovacs is the lone surviving Envoy after they were defeated in an uprising against the new world order. His mind was imprisoned, “on ice”, for centuries until Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy), an impossibly wealthy, long-lived man, offers Kovacs the chance to live again. In exchange, Kovacs has to solve a murder — that of Bancroft himself.
Martha Higareda also stars as Kristin Ortega, a smart and tough lieutenant in the Bay City PD who is following in the footsteps of her father, a cop who died heroically in the line of duty.
Miguel Sapochnik (Game of Thrones) directed the first episode. Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross executive produce alongside Steve Blackman and Kalogridis’ Mythology Entertainment partners Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt.
Source: Deadline
What, you thought you would get only one season of handsome British men educating you about the joys of the vine? The Wine Show is coming back for a second season on Hulu starting on December 1, which will again feature the debonair Matthew Goode, with the addition of his new second-in-command, James Purefoy. (Who, yes, is also quite debonair.)
While the first season took place in Umbria, Italy, this time, the duo is off to a villa in the south of France to sample all of the finest du vin possible, which, per Hulu, will also involve “kayaking and caving in the Ardeche, rounding up bulls on horseback in the Camargue, baking in Lyon, and even cooking their own lunch in the sweltering kitchens of the legendary Palme d’Or restaurant in Cannes.” For all of you Matthew Rhys enthusiasts out there, don’t worry: The fellow Matthew will stay on as a Wine Show consultant, showing off the coolest wine gadgets from the comfort of jolly old London. We’re getting seven episodes of this, people! Le swoon!
Source: Vulture