Robert and Michelle King’s upcoming Coronavirus drama series for Spectrum Originals is getting its second wave of casting.
Broadway stars Will Swenson, Phillipa Soo and Leslie Uggams have joined The Second Wave, which stars The Good Fight’s Audra McDonald, Orange Is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling and The Comey Rule’s Steven Pasquale.
Swenson, who has starred in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and Hair as well as Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, joins as a series regular, while Soo, best known for starring in Hamilton, and Uggams, who starred in Hallelujah, Baby! and is best known for her role in Roots, join as recurring guest stars.
Swenson and Uggams have both worked with The Kings before on The Good Wife.
Spectrum gave the six-episode pandemic drama a straight-to-series order, as revealed by Deadline last month, and it is co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios, where the Kings are based.
Created and written by Robert and Michelle King, The Second Wave follows an unexpected, deadly second wave of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City. It follows the lives of two neighbors, Rachel (McDonald) and Lily (Schilling), as they navigate life in quarantine in New York City. While Rachel juggles her many telemedicine clients as well as a shaky, passionless marriage, Lily is upstairs just trying to convince her Wall Street clientele that her very specific skillset is still just as valuable over video as it was in person. When an unexpected, deadly second wave of the virus arrives, we follow these two women as they face unprecedented times while still juggling their careers, their loved ones… and possibly…the end of the world?
Pasquale plays Rachel’s (McDonald) husband, Dr. Zach, a top official at the CDC who is stuck between the medicine he knows and the politics thrust upon him.
Swenson plays Brian Ritter, a photojournalist who has been embedded with Navy Seals and indigenous tribes and is stuck sheltering in place in New York. Soo plays Cydni Estereo, the White House liaison to the CDC, while Uggams plays Dr. Hester Boutella, a Nobel Nobel-prize winning immunologist and Rachel’s mother, who prioritizes her life in that order.
The Kings executive produce via their production company King Size Productions alongside Liz Glotzer and Brooke Kennedy.
Uggams and Swenson are repped by BRS / Gage Talent Agency and Soo is repped by Authentic Talent and Literary Management and UTA.