Sophie and James’ long-kept secrets will continue to unravel: Apple TV+ has renewed Surface for Season 2, the streamer announced Friday.
“I am thrilled to continue this journey and dive deeper into the tension and mystery of Surface with this brilliant team,” star and executive producer Gugu Mbatha-Raw said in a statement. “I love playing Sophie and I can’t wait for fans and new audiences to join us as she enters the dangerous new world of her past in Season 2.”
Added creator Veronica West: “I can’t wait for people to see how the show evolves as we explore an emboldened, fearless Sophie in Season 2. It’s been such a pleasure working with Gugu, Apple and the team at Hello Sunshine and a real privilege to continue the journey!” [More at Source]
News: Gugu Mbatha-Raw Set To Headline BBC Adaptation of JP Delaney’s ‘The Girl Before’
Here’s a hot new transatlantic project to start 2021: The Morning Show star Gugu Mbatha-Raw is set to be cast as the lead in a BBC adaptation of JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller The Girl Before.
Deadline can reveal that 42, the UK production outfit behind Netflix’s The English Game and the Emmy-winning BBC/Netflix animation Watership Down, is behind the four-part BBC One series, which will shoot this year. The Girl Before originally was optioned for a feature by Universal Pictures in 2015, with Ron Howard attached to direct, but now looks set to make its screen debut on television in 2021.
The Girl Before follows Jane, a traumatized woman who falls in love with an extraordinary minimalist house, which remains under the spell of the architect who originally designed it. But when she discovers that another damaged woman died in the same One Folgate Street property three years earlier, she starts to wonder if her own story is just a rerun of the girl before.
British actress Mbatha-Raw will play Jane in what represents her latest eye-catching role. Following the success of The Morning Show, in which she played an ambitious breakfast-TV guest booker, she was cast in Apple TV+ series Surface, which comes from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. She is attached to Blood Ties, an Aaron Katz (Gemini)-directed drama based on a Nathan Heller New Yorker article. She can next be seen in Disney+’s Marvel series also Loki, which premieres in May, and feature Seacole. [more at source]
News: Gugu Mbatha-Raw Joins The Jane Austen Collection for Audible
Dame Emma Thompson, Claire Foy and Florence Pugh are among the actresses who will lend their voices to new Jane Austen audiobooks. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Billie Piper will also take part in The Jane Austen Collection for Audible, featuring six of the author’s best-loved novels. Each story will be a hybrid of narration and full cast dramatisation. The Morning Show star Mbatha-Raw will narrate Sense And Sensibility, about the Dashwood sisters and their pursuit of happiness. Foy will read Pride And Prejudice, telling the story of the Bennet family and their five unmarried daughters as they seeks to make advantageous matches. [Source]
News: Gugu Mbatha-Raw Joins “Loki” Marvel Series On Disney+
EXCLUSIVE: Coming off Apple’s The Morning Show, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is heading to another streaming drama. The British actress has been cast in Loki, the Disney+ series starring Tom Hiddleston as the trickster demi-god and brother to Thor, I have learned.
As is the case with every Marvel project, details about Mbatha-Raw’s role are under wraps, but I hear it is a prominent character, described as the female lead. In addition to Hiddleston, the only actor who has been confirmed by Marvel/Disney, Mbatha-Raw joins fellow cast members Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino in the series. Marvel had no comment.
In the new Marvel Studios series, Hiddleston returns as the mercurial Loki, the Asgardian god of mischief and everyone’s favorite Marvel villain, in stories that take place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. with There likely will be a tie-in to the May 2021 supernatural sequel Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Mbatha-Raw was a series regular on the first season of Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show, starring opposite Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. On the big screen, she most recently starred in Motherless Brooklyn, alongside Edward Norton and Willem Dafoe. She will next be seen in the British comedy-drama Misbehaviour, starring alongside Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley, and in Come Away, starring opposite Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo. Additionally, she has completed production on World War II drama Summerland. [Source]
News: God Particle’s Marketing Campaign Begins
The third installment to the Cloverfield canon – God Particle or Untitled Cloverfield Sequel as some are calling it – is on the horizon, and another cryptic viral campaign is on the way.
The original marketing campaign (amid a number of curious red herrings) included a website for fictitious Japanese mining company Tagruato, which has recently been reinstated. One eagle-eyed Reddit user discovered that if you turn the brightness down on your screen, a message appears which reads:
Tokyo – January 18 2018: Tagruato has begun development on a revolutionary new energy technology in what Ceo Garo Yoshida called a technological great leap forward for our planet. This renewable technology will take at least 4 years to complete along with another six years International regulatory bodies to bring the powerful revolutionary energy source by April 18 2028.
There is also a link to another website, 04182028.com, which has far more frightening content (particularly if you have your computer volume whacked up without realizing) as a garbled audio plays over distorted visuals with a man warning us of “dangers” ahead. Consider us confused, and terrified. [Source]
News: Gugu to Receive an MBE in Queen’s Birthday Honours list
The Queen’s traditional list recognising public and private figures, sports stars and celebrities for their services to the country has been announced. There is a total of 1,109 people on the Honours list. Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) Awarded for an outstanding achievement or service to the community. This will have had a long-term, significant impact and stand out as an example to others. Gugu is going to be awarded for her achievment in drama.
Miss Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha-Raw. Actress. For services to Drama. (Oxfordshire)
The announcement was made in July (and I missed it because they actually typed in Gugu’s full name) but the actual ceremony is happening in a few weeks according to Amma Asante (Belle’s director who will also be honoured).
News: ‘A Wrinkle In Time’ to Debut at D23
Director Ava DuVernay confirmed it on twitter, can’t wait for D23 and hope it means Gugu will be there!
Teaser trailer coming at @D23Expo. Hope you like what you see! ✨ https://t.co/Ol1EqSNd64
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) July 3, 2017
News: Gugu Joins ‘Farming’
Kate Beckinsale, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and rising star Damson Idris (star of John Singelton’s upcoming FX series Snowfall) will star in Farming, a story based on the life of Nigerian-British actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.
In the 1960s through 1980s, Nigerian children were farmed out to white working class families in the UK and as they were in private foster care many of them were never registered with social services making them invisible to the authorities. Growing up in white communities across the country these children slowly lost their cultural identity and many were never reunited with their parents.
Idris will play a young Nigerian boy, “farmed out” by his parents to a white British family in the hope of giving him a better future. Instead, Enitan grows up to become the feared leader of a white skinhead gang in 1980s England. Beckinsale plays the self-serving foster mother Ingrid. When all seems lost and Enitan spirals into self-destruction, a benevolent teacher (Mbatha-Raw) offers him one last chance at redemption. [Source]
News: Gugu Joins “Irreplaceable You”
With a huge thanks for Debbie about the tip, it looks like Gugu joined the cast of a movie called “Irreplaceable You”.
What movie are you working on?
It’s Irreplaceable You and it’s starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who is one of my favorite actresses. She’s an absolute delight to work with. It’s a romantic comedy, but the subject matter is a little dark. It’s all about what happens when life throws a wrench into the plans you thought you had with the love of your life. How do you move on and make sure that they’re okay, if you have to move on apart? It’s been a great project and I like that I’m filming in New York for once. It’s so rare that I get to film in the city that I live in. [Source]
News: Gugu Mbatha-Raw to Star in Thriller ‘Fast Color’
Gugu Mbatha-Raw will star in thriller “Fast Color” for “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz via Original Headquarters and “Jackie” producers Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon via LD Entertainment.
“Miss Stevens” director Julia Hart is on board to helm from a screenplay she wrote with Horowitz. Principal photography will commence in New Mexico on March 13. LD is fully financing the project.
Mbatha-Raw will portray a woman forced to go on the run when her superhuman abilities are discovered. Years after having abandoned her family, the only place she has left to hide is home. [Source]