Grammy Award winner and Emmy nominee Phillipa Soo has joined the cast of Apple TV Plus’ Shining Girls, a metaphysical thriller based on the 2013 novel by Lauren Beukes.
Soo will be starring as the intelligent and sure-footed Jin-Sook, who does research at the Adler planetarium, Soo joins previously announced cast members Elisabeth Moss, Wagner Moura and Jamie Bell. Soo is best known for originating the role of Eliza Hamilton in the Broadway musical Hamilton, a performance which earned her a nomination for a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year. Soo is no stranger to the greater Chicago area because she was born in Libertyville, Illinois, where she also attended high school before attending the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.
The book, Shining Girls centers on a time-traveling Depression-era drifter who must murder the “shining girls” in order to continue his travels. In the series, Elisabeth Moss, plays Kirby Mazrachi a victim of serial killer Harper Curtis’ attack, who teams with Dan (Wagner Moura), a veteran journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times who is out to expose him. Jamie Bell also stars as Harper, a mysterious loner with a surprising connection to Kirby.
In May 2013, it was announced that MRC and Appian Way had bought the television rights. And it was finally in July, 2020, that Apple announced it had given the direct-to-series order for the project. Moss directs two episodes and executive produces through Love & Squalor Pictures alongside Lindsey McManus. Leonardo DiCaprio serves as executive producer through Appian Way alongside Jennifer Davisson and Michael Hampton, and Beukes and Alan Page Arriaga also executive produce. Silka Luisa is the showrunner.
The Shining Girls is the latest period piece to call Chicago a home following on the heels of Lovecraft Country, Fargo, Ma Bailey’s Black Bottom , Trial of the Chicago 7, and the Dick Wolf, One Chicago series.
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