Sean Astin (Stranger Things Season 2, The Lord of the Rings, The Strain, The Goonies) is set to star as Theodore Roosevelt, the Police Commissioner for New York City, in TNT‘s The Alienist, the eagerly-anticipated series based on the Anthony Award-winning New York Times bestseller by Caleb Carr. Astin joins fellow series regulars Daniel Brühl (Rush, Captain America: Civil War) as forensic psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler; Luke Evans (The Girl on The Train, Beauty and the Beast) as newspaper illustrator John Moore; and Dakota Fanning (American Pastoral, The Twilight Saga) as Sara Howard, a headstrong secretary at Police Headquarters, who together investigate a series of brutal murders in New York during the Gilded Age.
The Alienist is currently shooting in Budapest, Hungary, with BAFTA-nominated director Jakob Verbruggen (Black Mirror) at the helm. The series is a co-production of Paramount Television and Turner’s Studio T. Emmy Award winner Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), Academy Award winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), Academy Award nominee Hossein Amini (Drive) and Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin and Rosalie Swedlin serve as executive producers, along with Verbruggen.
Based on the international best-selling novel by Caleb Carr, The Alienist is a psychological thriller set in the Gilded Age of New York City in 1896, a city of vast wealth, extreme poverty and technological innovation. When a series of haunting, gruesome murders of boy prostitutes grips the city, newly appointed police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt calls upon criminal psychologist (aka alienist) Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and newspaper illustrator John Moore (Evans) to conduct the investigation in secret. They are aided by a makeshift crew of singular characters, among them the intrepid Sara Howard (Fanning), a young secretary on Roosevelt’s staff who is determined to become the first female police detective in New York City. Using the emerging disciplines of psychology and early forensic investigation techniques, this band of social outsiders tracks down one of New York City’s first serial killers.
Additional series regulars include Robert Wisdom (The Wire) as Cyrus, Kreizler’s valet, a man with a dark past who has been reformed by Kreizler; Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World) as Mary, Kreizler’s mute maid with whom he shares a special unspoken connection; Matt Lintz (Pixels) as Stevie, a tough, young boy employed by Dr. Kreizler as a driver and errand boy; and Matthew Shear (Mistress America) and Douglas Smith (Miss Sloane) as Lucius and Marcus Isaacson, twin brothers who help unravel the disturbing mystery.
Astin will play the brilliant, ambitious, but principled Theodore Roosevelt, a crusading reformist determined to clear up corruption in the police force he now heads. While usually inured to crime in New York, Roosevelt becomes outraged over the fact that children are being murdered in his city and develops a warlike zeal to find the perpetrator.
Astin is an actor/director best known for his film roles as Sam in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the title character in Rudy and Mikey in the popular classic The Goonies. In addition to The Alienist, Astin will star in the second season of Netflix’s Stranger Things and in Finn Taylor’s next film, Unleashed, with Kate Micucci. His television work includes such projects as Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain and the fifth season of 24. For the big screen, Astin directed and produced the short film Kangaroo Court, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. Astin also directed and produced the live-action short film The Long and Short of It, an official entry in the Sundance Film Festival. The veteran actor also has voiced many animated characters in film and on television, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bunnicula, Justice League, Special Agent Oso, Micronauts and Minecraft: Story Mode.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
