Discovery Channel announced today that Michael Nouri ("Woman Walks Ahead," "The Slap") and Ben Weber ("Sex and the City," "Secret Life of the American Teenager") have been cast in its upcoming highly-anticipated scripted series MANIFESTO, set to air this year. Produced by John Goldwyn, serving as consultant to Discovery, Lionsgate, Trigger Street Productions and Discovery Channel, the series will tell the story of how FBI agent Jim "Fitz" Fitzgerald (Sam Worthington, "Avatar," "Hacksaw Ridge") deployed a radical approach to intelligence gathering to take down Ted Kaczynski, portrayed by Paul Bettany ("Gangster No. 1," "Captain America: Civil War"), also known as the "Unabomber," one of the MOST INFAMOUS criminal masterminds in the world. Emmy(R) Award-winning television producer and director Greg Yaitanes ("Quarry," "Banshee") will executive produce, direct and serve as showrunner. Andrew Sodroski, whose "Holland, Michigan" topped Hollywood's famed Black List for screenplays in 2013, created the series and serves as an Executive Producer. Jim Fitzgerald will serve as Consulting Producer.
Nouri will play Penthouse founder Bob Guccione and Weber will play the role of Andy Genelli, former head of the Unabom Task Force. Discovery also recently announced Golden Globe and two-time Emmy winner Jane Lynch ("Glee," "Hollywood Game Night") will play the role of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Other cast includes Golden Globe(R) nominee Chris Noth ("The Good Wife," "Sex In The City") as Don Ackerman, the Bay Area Divisional Head of the FBI, who supervised the Unabomber Task Force; Oscar(R) nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Roadies," "Game of Thrones") as Tabby, a street agent who partners with Fitz; Mark Duplass ("Togetherness," "Blue Jay") as David Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski's younger brother; Jeremy Bobb ("The Knick," "Godless") as Stan Cole, a seasoned FBI agent and Ackerman's "foul-mouthed pit bull"; Lynn Collins ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine") as Natalie, a post-doc in linguistics at Stanford; Katja Herbers ("Manhattan," "The Leftovers"), as Linda, David Kaczinski's wife; and Brian F. O'Byrne ("Mildred Pierce," "Aquarius") as Frank McAlpine, the FBI's master profiler and Fitzgerald's professor who leads the Behavioral Analysis Unit. This series features both Bettany and Worthington's first major leading roles on U.S. television.
Nouri has enjoyed a long career spanning film, television and theatre. Nouri will next be seen in the film "Woman Walks Ahead" starring Jessica Chastain. Nouri's film work includes "Flashdance," "The Proposal," "Invincible," "The Terminal," "Last Holiday," starring Queen Latifah, Billy Crystal's "61*," "High Roller: The Stu Unger Story," "Lovely and Amazing," "Finding Forrester," starring opposite Sean Connery, "Easy Rider:
THE RIDE Back," "Goodbye Columbus," "Davinci's Way," "The Imagemaker," "Gobots," "Chameleon," "Fatal Sky," "Total Exposure," "Black Ice," "Fortunes of War," "To The Limit," and "The Hidden," for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Avoriaz Film Festival. In the television world, Nouri was recently seen guest starring in "Blue Bloods," "Chicago PD," and "Heartbeat." He was in the
NBC miniseries "The Slap," as well as the hit drama series "Damages" opposite Glenn Close, "NCIS," "Brothers and Sisters," and "The OC." He played the lead role of 'Lucky Luciano' in the highly-rated
NBC series "The Gangster Chronicles" and received an Emmy nomination for "Search for Tomorrow."
Weber, a Washington state native, is an American actor, writer and director. His acting career began in the mid-90s at the Boston Comedy Club, where his meteoric rise from doorman to opener garnered major industry attention and landed him a role in Jan de Bont's classic 90's disaster film, "Twister." The success of the blockbuster propelled him into years of television, film and commercial work. Select credits include: "Coach Carter," "Secret Life of the American Teenager," his unforgettable role on "Sex and the City," and one of those silly, but iconic, cavemen in the original GEICO commercials.
Production starts in Atlanta on January 30, 2017.
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