THE QUITE FABULOUS AMERICAN
MICHAEL STUHLBARG — who appeared in the Oscar-winning film The Shape Of Water and two other Academy Award-nominated pictures (The Post and Call Me By Your Name) — is joining Channel 4’s big, post-World War II spy thriller Jerusalem.
Many felt Stuhlbarg (right) should have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Timothee Chalamet’s father in Call Me By Your Name. When I saw him at the Oscars, he hinted he might soon be working in the UK.
Jerusalem, produced by Twenty Twenty and 42, reunites Stuhlbarg with Bash Doran, who wrote some episodes of Boardwalk Empire, in which Stuhlbarg portrayed Twenties mobster Arnold Rothstein.
British-born but New Yorkbased Doran told me she has long wanted to create a TV drama for the home front (her U.S. efforts include Masters Of Sex and The Looming Tower). She said the series will star ‘the best of the best of British actors, and Michael Stuhlbarg’. Emma Appleton will play Feef Symonds, a young woman from a failing aristocratic family who works for the civil sservice. Stuhlbarg plays an American living in the UK who’s connected to a rogue, pre-CIA intelligence agency. Doran explained that after Labour won the 1945 election, some in Washington feared what the Socialists would do. Labour had promised a National Health Service and other nationalised services. ‘Civil servants had to structure them from scratch,’ Doran said. Keeley Hawes has been cast as Priscilla Garrick, Feef’s superior. Others in the ‘HBO-sized ensemble’ include Luke Treadaway, Stephen Campbell Moore, Phoebe Nicholls, Owen Teale, Stanley Townsend and Matt Lauria.