EXCLUSIVE: Puzzle and Boardwalk Empire star Kelly Macdonald has lined up a leading role in BBC One/Netflix’s upcoming thriller Giri/Haji, Deadline understands. I hear Macdonald will play Sarah, a London-based forensics lecturer and policewoman who forms an unlikely friendship with a Japanese detective searching for his brother who has become entangled with the Yakuza.
First announced in May 2017, Giri/Haji (Duty/Shame) hails from Humans writer Joe Barton, and Jane Featherstone’s Sister Pictures. BBC One will air in the UK with Netflix handling globally.
The eight-part series follows middle-aged Tokyo detective Kenzo who travels to London in search of his wayward younger brother Yuto. Once thought dead, Yuto is now believed to be posing as a Yakuza gangster in London and wanted for the murder of a Japanese businessman there.
It is described as a dark, character-driven crime story which cuts between London and Tokyo, exploring the butterfly effect between the two cities, and asking: How do we live with our actions when the prisms they’re viewed through can seem to change so drastically depending on where we are or who we talk to?
The series will be shot in English and Japanese. Production begins later this month in the UK and will also take place in Tokyo and London.
Julian Farino, who directed Macdonald in BBC One’s The Child In Time, is helming. Producer is Susie Liggat.
Macdonald just wrapped BBC One legal drama The Victim. She next stars in Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle whcih Sony Pictures Classics acquired at Sundance and will release later this month.
Later this year, she co-stars as the long-suffering Mrs Hudson opposite Will Ferrell and John C Reilly in Sony’s Holmes And Watson and will revisit the voice of Merida in Disney’s Ralph Breaks The Internet.
Macdonald’s other credits include Black Mirror, Boardwalk Empire and the original State of Play. She’s repped by ICM Partners and Independent Talent Group.
