Casting Announced for US remake of The Slap

12 September 2014


Casting has been announced for the US version of the award-winning Australian series The Slap, produced in 2011 by Matchbox Pictures, format rights for which were sold to NBC Universal by DCD Rights in 2012.

Based on Christos Tsiolkas’ best-selling and Booker long-listed novel, The Slap is a bold, provocative eight-part television drama series that traces the shattering repercussions of a single event upon a group of family and friends, and forensically examines the mores and morality of contemporary middleclass life.

Acclaimed actors Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds), Peter Sarsgaard (The Killing), Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) and Emmy-winner Brian Cox (Nuremberg, Troy) will star in this gripping complex family drama about the events that follow after a man slaps another couple’s misbehaving child at a party.

Peter Sarsgaard will play the lead role as Hector, a husband and father who loves his wife and family but shows signs of weakness when he finds himself succumbing to the advances of his wife’s teenaged receptionist during his own party. Parker will play Anouk, a close friend of Hector’s who’s the head writer on a TV show and is now dating the younger leading man. Quinto plays Hector’s cousin Harry, the staunch believer in family loyalty and propriety who delivers the fateful slap. As a court case ensues, the story unfolds through the points of view of eight characters with Cox playing Manoli, a stern but devoted patriarch who struggles to defray the situation.

The Australian series originally starring Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda), Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) and Jonathan La Paglia (Cold Case) won Best Series nominations at the International Emmy Awards, BANFF World Media Festival, Monte Carlo TV Festival, Royal Television Society and BAFTA 2012 Awards, as well as Screen Music Awards for Best Television Theme and Best Soundtrack Album.

The NBC series is written by Jon Robin Baitz (Brothers & Sisters, The West Wing) and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, Oscar-nominated director of The Kids Are All Right for Universal TV and Matchbox Pictures, producer of the original series.