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Freeform’s CLOAK & DAGGER and The CW’s DYNASTY REBOOT made big casting announcement’s today as the former has booked Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph in the title roles and the latter has tapped UnReal‘s Nathalie Kelley in a lead role.
The young adult Marvel series, Cloak & Dagger, follows the interracial romance between Tandy Bowen, played by Holt, and Tyrone Johnson, played by Joseph. Each comes from vastly different backgrounds, each growing up with a secret they never dared share with another soul, and special abilities they use to protect themselves and the world around them. Bowen emits light daggers and Johnson is able to engulf others in darkness. It’s a series of utter opposites attracting as the pair quickly realizes they are better together than apart, but their feelings for each other make their already complicated world even more challenging.
The series has been in development for a few years going back to ABC Family’s change to Freeform and is a co-production between Marvel Studios and ABC Signature Studios.
Over at The CW, they Dynasty reboot from Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage have cast Nathalie Kelley as Cristal. The series is a modern take on the 1980s primetime soap that follows two of America’s wealthiest families, the Carringtons and the Colbys, and their ongoing feud for control over their fortune and their children. The new series will center around two primary females-at-odds: Fallon and Cristal. Fallon is the daughter of billionaire Blake Carrington and Cristal is her soon-to-be stepmother, a Hispanic woman marrying into a WASPy family and America’s most powerful class.
While the diverse spin plays directly into the previous success that The CW has found with their series Jane the Virgin, recent female-centric dramas have found a positive response to moving away from pitting two female characters against one another and instead pairing them together against the world. This was most recently seen in the pilot Riverdale, which adapted the classic comic into an edgier, Twin Peaks-esque drama, where Betty and Veronica (who are “best friends and worst enemies in the comics) were depicted primarily as allies. It will be interesting to see if the Dynasty reboot pilot will keep these central figures at odds or will follow suit with a fresh spin on female relationships.
Kelley has previously starred in Lifetime’s UnReal and fellow CW series The Vampire Diaries. She is repped by Burstein Company.
Holt, who is also a recording artist, has previously been seen in the television series Evermoor and I Didn’t Do It. She is repped by Paradigm and Management 360.
Joseph burst onto the scene recently with performances in the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Night Of and the feature film Run All Night. He is repped by Jordan, Gill & Dornbaum and Principal Entertainment LA.
Emily J | Staff Writer
