Tim Roth (Hateful Eight, Lie to Me) is replacing Ian McShane in Paramount+’s buzzy Australian drama series Last King of the Cross.
Roth takes on the role of antagonist Ezra Shipman in the Helium Pictures-produced serialized crime drama after McShane withdrew due to health concerns.
McShane was originally cast as Shipman in late March. He is also set to reprise his role opposite Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4. Deadline has reached out to his reps.
The show’s producer/executive producer and Helium founder Mark Fennessy said: “It’s unfortunate that Ian is unable to join us and we wish him a speedy recovery. We are truly delighted that the super brilliant Tim Roth joins our cast as Ezra and cannot wait to see him breathe life into yet another unforgettable character.”
Inspired by John Ibrahim’s best-selling autobiography, the ten-part Last King of The Cross is billed as “an operatic story of two brothers,” following Ibrahim and his brother Sam “who organise the street but lose each other in their ascent to power. The elevated serialised drama tracks John Ibrahim’s rise from a poverty-stricken immigrant with no education, no money, and no prospects, to Australia’s most infamous nightclub mogul in Sydney’s Kings Cross — a mini-Atlantic City, barely half a mile long with every form of criminality on offer.”
The Shipman character is billed as a “wily and much-celebrated” underworld boss in Kings Cross. According to producers, “For three generations Ezra has been the most powerful and most feared man in Sydney, but now he is confronting his looming mortality. For all his power and material success, and all he has had to do to maintain it, there is no one to continue his legacy. Enter John Ibrahim.”
Helium produces, with Cineflix Rights attached as international distributor. Filming is currently taking place in and around Sydney, with Lincoln Younes (Grand Hotel, Tangle, Barons) playing the lead character of John Ibrahim.
Further cast includes Callan Mulvey (300: Rise of an Empire, Outlaw King), Tess Haubrich (Spiderhead, Alien: Covenant), Claude Jabbour (Eden, Stateless), Maria Tran (Truy Sat, Echo 8), Matt Nable (Riddick, Bikie Wars: Brothers In Arms), Damian Walshe-Howling (Underbelly, Janet King).
Roth is represented by CAA, Jackoway Tyerman Wertheimer, and Markham, Froggatt & Irwin.