Tim Robbins has joined the cast of HBO’s family drama from Alan Ball, Variety has learned.
The Academy Award winner will star alongside Holly Hunter in the untitled 10-episode series.
The series focuses on a contemporary multi-racial family: a philosophy professor, his lawyer wife, their three adopted children from Somalia, Vietnam and Colombia, and their sole biological child. This seemingly perfect, progressive family is in actuality harboring deep rifts. Then, one of the children begins to see things others cannot — is it mental illness, or something else? The series is described as a tragicomic meditation on the complicated forces at work on us all in America today.
Robbins will play the philosophy professor, Greg. He is questioning his life, his purpose, and the world in which he lives — a world in which it seems the bad guys have won — and his strained relationship with his wife Audrey (Hunter) adds to his overall anxiety.
The drama was ordered straight-to-series last summer, marking the latest collaboration between HBO and Ball, who created “True Blood” and “Six Feet Under.” For the new series, Ball will serve as executive producer with Peter Macdissi. Ball’s shingle Your Face Goes Here is behind the project.
Along with Robbins and Hunter, the cast is rounded out by Sosie Bacon, Daniel Zovatto, Raymond Lee and “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Jerrika Hinton.
Robbins is the latest film star to sign onto a TV project. Known for “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Mystic River,” his latest movie is “Marjorie Prime,” which debuted this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Robbins recently was in business with HBO in the short-lived comedy “The Brink.”
