Taboo, a major eight-episode drama series created by Steven Knight and directed by Kristoffer Nyholm for BBC One and FX, is to start filming in London this week starring Tom Hardy in the lead role alongside a major international cast.
Taboo will star Hardy as James Keziah Delaney who returns to 1814 London after 10 years in Africa to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father. Driven to wage war on those who have wronged him, Delaney finds himself in a face-off against the East India Company, while playing a dangerous game between two warring nations – Britain and America.
The talent on- and off-screen is incredible and I am so excited to see Steve’s captivating scripts come to life. Tom Hardy and the rest of the cast are set to bring this original and spectacular story to life in a unique and epic way.” Polly Hill, Controller BBC Drama commissioning commented.
Starring alongside Hardy is Michael Kelly (House of Cards, Everest), who plays American doctor Dumbarton, Jonathan Pryce (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Brazil) as Sir Stuart Strange, the head of the East India Company and Delaney’s nemesis, Oona Chaplin (The Crimson Field, The Hour) as Zilpha Geary James’s half-sister, and David Hayman (Macbeth, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) as Brace, Delaney’s trusted man-servant. Jessie Buckley (Shades of Love, Trevor Nunn’s A Little Light Music) plays Lorna Bow who lays claim to James’s father’s will. Ashley Walters (Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Bullet Boy) is a dangerous face from James’s years in Africa. Jefferson Hall (Vikings, Our World War) plays Thorne Geary, Zilpha’s husband; Ed Hogg (White Lightnin’, Anonymous) is Godfrey, Delaney’s cross-dressing spy inside the East India Company, Leo Bill (Alice in Wonderland, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is Wilton, Strange’s fashionable, amoral accomplice; Christopher Fairbank (Guardians of the Galaxy, Hercules) as Ibbotson, a man to whom James is indebted; Richard Dixon (The King’s Speech, Mr Turner) is Pettifer, Strange’s right-hand man; Jason Watkins (The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, Nativity) is Solomon Coop, the Prince Regent’s right-hand man and Spy Master; and Nicholas Woodeson (Rome, The Living and the Dead) is lawyer Thoyt, the Delaney family’s former lawyer.