The First Lady: O-T Fagbenle joins Viola Davis in Obama series
With Oscar-winner Viola Davis set to star as the former First Lady, an actor you will recognise from The Handmaid’s Tale has been tapped to play the president.
The First Lady puts its cards on the table immediately.
This new television show will focus on the personal within the political, telling the story of the wives and families of some of the most important presidents in American history. The series, which will be airing in the US on Showtime, with streaming plans in Australia yet to be announced, will be structured like an anthology. Each season will zero in on a few specific First Ladies — and, of course, their husbands.
The first season of The First Ladywill tell the story of Michelle Obama, played by Viola Davis, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson) and Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer).
And with production about to commence, further casting details have been announced, including who will play Barack Obama to Davis’ Michelle: O-T Fagbenle.
The London-born actor is best known for his role on The Handmaid’s Tale as Luke, husband to June (Elisabeth Moss) working desperately to bring her to safety from the other side of the Canadian border. He’ll next be seen in Marvel’s Black Widow, set for release in cinemas in April, alongside Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh. Outside of dystopian television and superhero movies, he’s also tread the boards in Shakespeare plays, starred in the adaptation of Zadie Smith’s novel NW and in the HBO series Looking.
He’s also one of four siblings, who grew up in a performing household: one of his sisters is an Olympian, and he has a brother who directs music videos for Drake and Beyoncé.
Fagbenle’s got the cinematic presence, he’s got the gravitas, and at 41, he is about the right age to be playing Obama, who took office at the age of 44, making him one of the youngest sitting presidents in American history.
And Davis is going to perfect as Michelle, too. The actor is also serving as producer on the project, and has had a role in picking the rest of the cast, which includes Australian Rhys Wakefield as Dick Cheney, Aaron Eckhart as President Gerald Ford and Judy Greer as Nancy Howe.
It looks set to fulfil the actor’ recent promise, too, that her coming projects will always serve to amplify Blackness.
“Not a lot of narratives are also invested in our humanity,” she told Vanity Fair in June 2021. “They’re invested in the idea of what it means to be Black, but … it’s catering to the white audience. The white audience at the most can sit and get an academic lesson into how we are. Then they leave the movie theatre and they talk about what it meant. They’re not moved by who we were.”
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