Irish actress Ruth Negga has been cast as a slave in director Steve McQueen’s upcoming feature ‘Twelve Years a Slave’.
IFTA-winning Negga will join fellow Irish actor Michael Fassbender, who was cast earlier this year, and the recently cast Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood). Brad Pitt will also feature in the film, as well as New York actress Adepero Oduye and British actor Chiwatel Ejiofor (Salt).
Negga will play a runaway slave in the biopic based on Solomon Northup (Ejiofor), a man who was born free but forced into slavery in the 19th century.
Director Steve McQueen, who has previously worked with Fassbender on dramas ‘Hunger’ and ‘Shame’, co-wrote the script with John Ridley, who is also the executive producer on upcoming Jimi Hendrix biopic ‘All Is By My Side’, which is to begin filming in Ireland this month.
Production on ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ is scheduled to begin at the end of June, with a theatrical release slated for 2013. Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company is producing the film.
Negga is best known on Irish shores for playing Rosie in gangland drama ‘Love/Hate’. She recently starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson in ‘The Samaritan’, and can be seen next in TV series ‘Coup’, a thriller centred around the relationship between big business and politics, starring Irish actor Gabriel Byrne. Negga will not feature in the forthcoming series of ‘Love/Hate’
