Letitia Wright and John Boyega have been as the leads for Steve McQueen’s highly anticipated anthology series at BBC. The project is gaining a lot of steam as Amazon has come on board to air the show in the United States. Variety broke the news of their casting on Wednesday.

They join a cast that already includes Malachi Kirby, Shaun Parkes, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings and Jack Lowden. Set to be the 12 Years a Slave and Widows director’s biggest TV project, it is “set in London’s West Indian community, starting in the late 1960s and running until the early 80s.”

“I felt these stories needed to be shared. I wanted to relive, reevaluate and investigate the journeys that my parents and the first generation of West Indians went on to deliver me here today calling myself a black British person. What’s important about our stories is that they are local but at the same time global,” says McQueen.

McQueen’s last brush with TV was a few years back when he set a six-part series for HBO, Codes of Conduct, that would have followed a young Black man in New York City as he enters high society. A starry ensemble was set, including relative newcomer Devon Terrell, Helena Bonham Carter, Rebecca Hall and a pre-BlacKkKlansman Laura Harrier. The project would go on to be shelved.

This isn’t the only project Wright and Boyega will star in together. They will lead the upcoming romantic sci-fi film, Hold Back the Stars, which is based on the novel of the same name.

READ MORE:

‘Hold Back The Stars’: John Boyega And Letitia Wright To Star In Sci-Fi Love Story Based On Novel

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/MG18/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Jack Lowden

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