An excerpt from a press release about the forthcoming HBO series (which will be on the Movie Network/Movie Central in Canada):
Among the actors starring in the first season are Kevin McKidd (Kingdom of Heaven) as Lucius Vorenus, Ray Stevenson (King Arthur) as Titus Pullo, Ciaran Hinds (Road to Perdition) as Gaius Julius Caesar, Kenneth Cranham (Gangster No. 1) as Pompey Magnus, Polly Walker (Patriot Games) as Atia of the Julii, James Purefoy (Vanity Fair) as Mark Antony, Tobias Menzies (Foyle's War) as Marcus Junius Brutus, Lindsay Duncan (Under the Tuscan Sun) as Servilia of the Junii, Indira Varma (Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love) as Niobe, Max Pirkis (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) as Gaius Octavian and Kerry Condon (Angela's Ashes) as Octavia of the Julii.
... anyone else see an impressive bit of attention to detail here (save, perhaps, for 'Octavia of the Julii' ... and maybe Atia of the Julii)? At least they seem to be making the effort to be technically correct. I wonder who Niobe is ... Varma could certainly play Cleopatra (maybe a bit old?); the IMDB doesn't list anyone as Cleo in the series, by the way ... I wonder if Niobe is just a nom de film ... consider this paragraph from something at UChicago:
Among the actors starring in the first season are Kevin McKidd (Kingdom of Heaven) as Lucius Vorenus, Ray Stevenson (King Arthur) as Titus Pullo, Ciaran Hinds (Road to Perdition) as Gaius Julius Caesar, Kenneth Cranham (Gangster No. 1) as Pompey Magnus, Polly Walker (Patriot Games) as Atia of the Julii, James Purefoy (Vanity Fair) as Mark Antony, Tobias Menzies (Foyle's War) as Marcus Junius Brutus, Lindsay Duncan (Under the Tuscan Sun) as Servilia of the Junii, Indira Varma (Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love) as Niobe, Max Pirkis (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) as Gaius Octavian and Kerry Condon (Angela's Ashes) as Octavia of the Julii.
... anyone else see an impressive bit of attention to detail here (save, perhaps, for 'Octavia of the Julii' ... and maybe Atia of the Julii)? At least they seem to be making the effort to be technically correct. I wonder who Niobe is ... Varma could certainly play Cleopatra (maybe a bit old?); the IMDB doesn't list anyone as Cleo in the series, by the way ... I wonder if Niobe is just a nom de film ... consider this paragraph from something at UChicago:
Of the portraits of Cleopatra neither those that are supposed to be authentic nor those that are certainly known to be so, show similarity to the heads on the coins nor to each other. In a marble head in the Capitoline Museum one can perhaps discover in the rounding contour of the face, the regularity of the features and the strong neck, a similarity to our painting.The marble head of a dying woman with a diadem who inclines her head somewhat to the right and opens the mouth in a similar manner described by Bergerus and called Cleopatra, is probably a Niobe, to which also the classically noble lines point. A bronze statuette described by Caylus, which without special reason is considered a Cleopatra, Raoul-Rochette declares to be a Thetis.