Jessica Chastain is the latest A list actress going wild for a limited series
Jessica Chastain
Is the limited series the new Oscar-baiting biopic? It seems so, with the way A-list actresses are scrambling to sign up for television’s most prestigious format. Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman really started the trend, starting with Big little lies and then snapping a series of literary adaptations between them. Plenty of big stars have followed in her footsteps (and picked up Emmys for their troubles), but Jessica Chastain is beginning to stand out from the crowd with her own limited-series roster.
The latest is scholar, a new Apple TV+ series for which she serves as both star and executive producer. She will “play a top-secret investigator named Savant who infiltrates online hate groups to bring down the country’s most violent men,” per meeting. The plot is based on the true story reported in Cosmopolitan by Andrea Stanley, who will advise the series. Melissa James Gibson (Anatomy of a Scandal) will direct the eight-part series.
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This comes after Chastain received awards and recognition for two recent television projects, 2021 Scenes from a Marriage (starring Oscar Isaac) and 2022 George & Tammy (with Michael Shannon). Of course, the Oscar-winner got her start in television, with early credits involving guest appearances HE And Veronica Mars. But that was before Chastain made it big and before television became the playground for megastars.
Since then, the limited series has become a hotspot for Oscar winners (Kate Winslet, Regina King, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Williams), Oscar losers trying to snag another award (Amy Adams, we’ll get our revenge), underrated stars who have their moment in the limelight (Amanda Seyfried, Patricia Arquette, Kirsten Dunst), and up-and-coming talent making their mark as serious stars (Margaret Qualley, Lily James, Joey King). And that’s just a small sampling of female stars who typically gravitate toward the “movie” side of the equation.
Of course, the limited series has always attracted a higher caliber of talent than your standard series, but it was a rare thing for someone like Meryl Streep to dip her toe in the limited series pool. (Nowadays, she’ll even deign to join something as casual as one third season!) But with the sheer volume of television being produced (thanks to a proliferation of streaming services), actors are starting to really rack up their limited series credits.
Back in 2017, Nicole Kidman (who has had five TV series under her belt in the last decade and five more in production) explained why Hollywood women were interested in the medium. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity for women in television right now because it’s a place where there’s money and directors of this caliber [Top Of The Lake’s Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman] who are willing to work in this medium and write and explore their storytelling,” she said per The Hollywood Reporter. “I think there’s a tremendous appeal for actors who work there because you have time to develop a character and unfold stories. How Big little lies, where there were five amazing roles for women. The big roles for women are obviously being developed right now.”
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