With filming completed, and only a mere two months left until it finally arrives on our screens, it seemed improbable that the upcoming ‘Punisher’ show would have any significant announcements left to make. The awesome teaser trailer that landed this week alongside ‘The Defenders’ perfectly set the dark and brooding tone for the series, but it seems the makers still aren’t finished yet with the big reveals.
EW are reporting that Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo has joined the project in the recurring role of Farah Madani. Farah is the mother of Dinah Madani (played by Amber Rose Revah), a Homeland Security Agent who is in pursuit of Frank Castle. With Dinah based loosely on the complicated Punisher MAX character Kathryn O’Brien, being related or associated with her may well prove fateful for any of the new players in the show.
Aghdashloo is exactly the kind of talent that any new series would want to harness in order to impress audiences for its debut season. In addition to being an Oscar nominee (The House Of Sand And Fog), she continues to wow audiences playing the lead in the simply excellent ‘The Expanse’, as well as having appearances in the ‘X-Men’ and ‘Star Trek’ franchises under her belt.
It that wasn’t enough excitement for fans, a quick trawl of the ever-expanding IMDB page for the project has also revealed some other significant casting developments. First up, actor Tim Guinee will be completing a hat-trick of appearances in Marvel projects, having already cropped up previously in the original ‘Blade’ and ‘Iron Man’ movies.
More importantly, Episode 4 of the series now features actor Rob Morgan amongst the listed cast? Why is this relevant? Because he has played the terminally unlucky hoodlum Turk Barrett in all five previous Marvel/Netflix shows to date. So whilst this may be the first project from the collaboration to not feature Rosario Dawson, Morgan will be acting alongside Deborah Ann Woll as the glue that holds the new series together with the existing properties.
Add to all this 80’s legend Mary Elizabeth Masterantonio as a sinister government suit giving orders to Paul Schulze’s sleazy Agent Rawlins, and British actor Ben Barnes (Westworld) being set up as future Punisher antagonist ‘Jigsaw’, it’s hard to see how this series is going to be anything other than a huge success…