If you haven’t noticed, a new detective agency has opened up in town, and Marvel’s Jessica Jones will soon be making her way to Netflix for A.K.A. Jessica Jones. Casting has been consistent over the past few months, and we now have three more actors to add to the list of talented thesps. Empire’s Eka Darville, The Kings of Summer’s Erin Moriarty and Red Widow’s Wil Traval have all joined the cast of the Krysten Ritter-starring comic book action drama.
Here’s the basic premise: Jessica Jones is a former superhero who gave up the lifestyle and opened up her own private eye office, called Alias Investigations. Her cases, to be expected, involve a lot of superpowered citizens. Now to take a closer look at the new additions and who they’ll be playing.
Eka Darville will play a character named Malcolm, a neighbor of Jessica’s who enters her story in a “surprising way,” according to Marvel, while on his own unique path. Executive producer Melissa Rosenberg, who developed A.K.A. Jessica Jones for Netflix, says the “depth, humor and nuanced performance” of Darville’s past work make him ideal for the part. Here’s hoping Jessica lives next to interesting people.
Erin Moriarty will play a young girl named Hope who tasks Alias with a case. Rosenberg likes Moriarty because she’s “mature and complex” and “brings myriad levels to every scene” in her past work. Sounds like she’ll be a smaller part of this new universe, perhaps only showing up for one week, depending on how the case-by-case structure is handled. However it goes, choosing an actor based on their complexity is always the better choice for a superhero series.
Wil Traval’s role sounds somewhat mysterious, as he’ll be playing an NYPD cop that “takes ‘protect and serve’ very seriously.” Is he part robot, and is his name also Alex Murphy? (His name isn’t given in the press release.) Traval’s “emotionally courageous” side makes Rosenberg happy with this choice, saying he can play “funny or fierce.” No clue whether he’s supposed to be one of the good guys or one of the less good guys, but IMDb has him listed for all 13 episodes. Grain of salt taken.
This trio joins the previously cast David Tennant as Kilgrave, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Rachael Taylor as Trish Walker, and Carrie Anne Moss as an as-yet-unnamed character. This is about as solid a cast as a show can hope for right out of the gate, and we’re expecting big things from this, as well as Netflix’s other Marvel series.
Darville, who will show up for a recurring role in the second half of Empire’s first season, most recently starred in the first season of The Originals, and was the Red Eagle RPM Power Ranger in that series. Moriarty, who worked with Rosenberg and Traval on Red Widow, starred most recently in True Detective and will soon be seen opposite Mel Gibson in Jean-François Richet’s Blood Father. Traval, probably best known in Australia for his years on All Saints, was on a recent episode of CSI and was the Sheriff of Nottingham on Once Upon a Time.
Netflix hasn’t set a hard date for A.K.A. Jessica Jones just yet, but we can probably expect it in early 2016.
