EXCLUSIVE: Joanne Froggatt, famed for MobLand and Downton Abbey, is in final talks to join Matt Dillon in The Magnificent Seven, the MGM+ TV western remake that begins filming on location in Calgary next week, Deadline has learned.
Froggatt joins the the already announced Dillon, Will Patton and Michael Ealy, who are members of the seven-strong group of mercenaries who use military skills and sheer cunning to defend a pacifist Quaker community from a land-hungry rancher and his hired thugs in the American wild west of the 1880s.
Froggatt is set to play the leader of the Quaker group under siege. The Religious Society of Friends, to give the Quakers their original title, believed in the equal treatment of women and that every person possessed “inner light.” They also preached “abstaining from participation in violent acts,” which will add to the tension in Tom Kring’s adaptation.
This is a thrilling gig for Froggatt, who started out on The Bill [a rite of passage for most Brit actors] and Coronation Street, before landing her breakthrough role in Downton Abbey. Her last appearance as Anna Bates in Julian Fellowes’ celebrated upper crust soapie drama was in last year’s Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.
Heroes creator Kring has reimagined John Sturges’ mighty 1960s movie that starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Branson as gunfighters contracted by Mexican villagers to protect them from outlaws, as an eight-part series for MGM+.
Sturges’ movie was itself based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai masterpiece, hailed as one of the most influential films ever made.
The most recent iteration of Kurosawa’s tale, until now, was Antoine Fuqua’s 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven with Denzel Washington riding in the saddle alongside the likes of Ethan Hawke and Chris Pratt.
Froggatt, who hails from North Yorkshire, England, recently completed shooting her scenes as Jan Da Souza, wife of Tom Hardy’s Tom Da Souza in Paramount+’s MobLand. That one has been beset by drama with a capital “D,” most of it apparently involving Hardy, who is now outta the series after clashing with showrunner Jez Butterworth. There’s no confirmation as to whether Froggatt will return for Season 3.
Froggatt’s reps at Personal PR and Conway van Gelder Grant declined to respond to persistent messages seeking comment.
