Disney+ has announced the cast for its latest TV series, Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, from Jeff Pope. Details below.
There have been some excellent, original British TV series hailing from Disney+. Some of them, like Extraordinary and Renegade Nell, met their end far too soon, but Rivals was quite an experience and viewers have A Thousand Blows to look forward to. Now, there’s a new name to be added to the list of British shows on the service.
Disney+ has announced the cast for their upcoming series Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. The series, which will focus on the manhunt and eventual killing of the innocent Brazilian man who was mistaken for a terrorist, is heading to the streaming service in Spring 2025, with a specific date to be announced.
Edison Alcaide is set to play the titular victim while Conleth Hill, Russell Tovey, Max Beesley, Daniel Mays, Laura Aikman and Alex Jennings will join him in the series. Emily Mortimer is set to play Cressida Dick, who headed the entire operation that led to de Menezes’ death.
Here’s a more detailed description of the series: Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes focuses on the events surrounding the tragic killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, after he is mistaken for a terrorist. Told from multiple perspectives of those involved, it examines how memory – both accurate and distorted – can be turned into fact and shape our understanding of the truth.
Set twenty years ago, as London reels from the devastating suicide bomb attacks of 7 July 2005, the Metropolitan Police launches a large-scale counter terrorism operation to prevent further attacks. Unbeknownst to them, another terrorist cell plots an assault that could equal the devastation of 7/7.
This second set of planned attacks fails, setting off one of the UK’s largest-ever manhunts and sparking a covert surveillance operation. As tension and uncertainty rises across the nation, a series of extraordinary events unfolds, leading to a critical misidentification. Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent young Brazilian electrician on his way to work, is mistaken for a terrorist and shot dead at Stockwell station. What follows is a family’s fight for justice and answers, and the long-fought struggle to bring clarity to a situation that is clouded by confusion, and silence.
The series will be written and executive produced by Jeff Pope of Philomena and Stan And Ollie fame, and Paul Andrew Williams is in the director’s chair. Jean Charles de Menezes’ family, including his parents, serve as consultants for the series.
“This is an incredibly important story to tell, and we’ve got a heavyweight ensemble cast in place that will help us examine the events that led to the tragic shooting of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes. He was just a commuter who was tracked for nearly an hour with surveillance failing to correctly identify him, before he was shot dead on a crowded tube train, leaving his family to try and shine a light on the critical errors that led to this devastating tragedy,” Pope commented.
More on Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as we hear it.
