Glenn Close to join ‘Tehran’ cast amid union woes
Glenn Close will be joining the cast of the second season of the suspense thriller Tehran, the website Deadline.com reported Tuesday.
Close will portray Marjan Montazeri, a British woman living in Tehran, the site reported. Tehran tells the story of a Mossad agent (Niv Sultan), who goes undercover in Iran to try to damage the nuclear program.
Close is one of America’s most acclaimed actresses, and has been nominated for eight Oscars, most recently for Hillbilly Elegy. She has starred in hit films such as Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons and 101 Dalmatians, as well as several television series, including The Shield and Damages.
Tehran, which debuted on the Israeli government network KAN 11 and later became available on Apple TV+, was created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden and Maor Kohn and directed by Daniel Syrkin.
The news of Close’s casting comes just hours after the Israeli actors’ union, Shaham, and Act, the Israeli Association of Film and Television Professionals, petitioned the Supreme Court against KAN, saying that Tehran cannot be designated as an Israeli production because the percentage of Israeli actors and crew is too low.
According to a representative of Shaham, the Israelis in the cast and crew do not account for 75% of the total number of those employed on the Tehran set, which means the series
is not entitled to Israeli government funds and cannot be designated as an Israeli production. Most of the series is filmed in Greece and most of the crew is from there, he said. The goal of both unions is to increase the number of Israelis on the set, and in the case of actors, to increase the number
of minutes of screen time given to Israelis. Some members of the cast, such as Shaun Toub and Shervin Alenabi, are actors of Iranian descent based in the US and the UK.
However, a representative of KAN said the claims in the petition are misleading, because 80% of the funding for the second season is from Apple TV+ and that KAN is required by law to invest NIS 270 million a year in local productions, which the company has already done this year, without including the budget of Tehran.
KAN said in a statement, “Tagid [the Israeli Broadcasting
Corporation] has acted and is acting in accordance with the law and sees before its eyes only the good of the public, the work and the Israeli production market. We will continue to produce quality and diverse content with achievements in both the local and international sectors.”
The Producers Union said in a statement, “The petition to the High Court, submitted by the actors’ organization and the crew members’ organization, seeks to eliminate the possibility of co-productions, joint Israeli and international productions. There will be no more Tehran, Valley of Tears and other joint productions, because they will not be able to bring in resources from abroad. There is no logic in this, this is not the intention of the legislation and this harms the actors who are members of the Shaham organization and the crew members who are members of the Act organization.”