Ava DuVernay’s upcoming film Caste has assembled a top-tier ensemble, including Aunjanue Ellis, Victoria Pedretti, Niecy Nash, Jon Benthal, Donna Mills, Nick Offerman and many more.

Back in 2020, DuVernay first announced that film project, which is based on the Oprah Book Club selection Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson. The film has been casting for a while, and now, the cast seems to be complete. The project was first set up at Netflix but seems to be no longer attached to the streamer.

Blair Underwood, Isha Blaaker, Pedretti and Finn Wittrock are the latest additions to the cast, according to Deadline.

They join the previously cast stars including the film’s lead, Ellis, as well as Leonardo Nam, Emily Yancy, Mills, Nash, Offerman, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Connie Nielsen and Bernthal.

DuVernay is producing the film through her company ARRAY Filmworks with production partner Paul Garnes. She will also pen the script and direct the film.

As Shadow and Act reported in 2020, the book Caste explores how a caste system is at play in America’s social hierarchy. The official description of the book reads, “Through a multiple-story structure, Caste examines the unspoken system that has shaped America and chronicles how our lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions dating back generations.” It’s assumed the film will follow the same framework, but will, of course, be a fictional story, while the book was a nonfiction book of American social life.

Caste would be DuVernay’s follow-up to When They See Us, the limited series chronicling the lives of the Central Park 5. Her dramatic work has won critical and viewer acclaim.

Caste

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