Lauren Cohan Joins Stillwater — plus Laird, Guilty Creatures and More

Entertainment News and Casting Round-up · Wednesday 21 October 2026 · covering 14–21 October

The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan is heading to a small town where nobody ever dies, and that is just the start of a busy week for casting. Kenneth Branagh’s Highland drama Laird has added seven names, Mary-Louise Parker is joining Julia Garner’s true-crime thriller, and three young genre stars are hitting the road in a new horror film. This week’s round-up skips the stories our daily editions have already covered, and looks at what the new casting tells us.

The News That Matters

Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror. Genre casting comes first, as always. It was a quieter week than usual for Doctor Who, The X-Files, Star Trek and Star Wars casting, and our daily editions have already covered the franchise news, so the two biggest new genre casting stories lead this week.

Lauren Cohan, Mark O’Brien and Mia Tomlinson join Prime Video’s Stillwater

• Confirmed: Prime Video announced the three new cast members on Thursday 15 October, Variety reported
• The story: An eight-episode horror thriller based on Chip Zdarsky and Ramón K. Pérez’s graphic novel. Ex-con Daniel West (Ben Hardy) inherits something in a town where nobody ages, nobody dies and nobody gets out
• The new roles: Cohan plays Cat Keegan, a former homecoming queen; O’Brien is her husband Ted, a deputy who keeps the town in line, sometimes violently; Tomlinson plays Cat’s younger sister Laura, a single mother
• UK availability: The series is heading to Prime Video, which is available in the UK. It has not started filming yet, so there is no release date. UK date not yet confirmed

This is a homecoming of sorts for Cohan. Stillwater is being made by Skybound Entertainment, Robert Kirkman’s company, which also produced The Walking Dead, where she played Maggie Greene for more than a decade. Greg Berlanti and Carly Wray are writing and running the show, and Kirkman is among the executive producers.

The casting also tells you what kind of show this is. Cat and Ted are not monsters. They are a loyal couple who have spent years persuading themselves that the town’s secret is worth protecting. Hiring Cohan, who spent a decade playing a survivor audiences trusted, and O’Brien, best known from Ready or Not and Arrival, suggests that the horror will come from ordinary people making terrible choices. Tomlinson was last seen in The Conjuring: Last Rites, and English actor Ben Hardy, from EastEnders and Bohemian Rhapsody, leads the cast.

Xochitl Gomez, Madeleine McGraw and Jack Champion hit the road in YA horror Bad Influence

• Confirmed: Deadline announced the cast on Thursday 15 October
• The story: Pitched as a modern-day Thelma & Louise fuelled by female rage: Isabelle (McGraw) and Kira (Gomez) pick up a hitchhiker, Liam (Champion), on their drive home for spring break, and he is not what he seems
• Behind it: Jason Perlman directs from a script by Brandon Cohen. Debbie Liebling and Joel David Moore, who worked together on Dodgeball, are among the producers
• UK availability: No distributor or release date yet; Capture is handling international sales. UK date not yet confirmed

All three leads already have big genre or franchise films behind them. Gomez played America Chavez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, McGraw was Gwen in both Black Phone films, and Champion was Spider in the Avatar films and appeared in Scream VI.

Putting three young stars with franchise followings into a smaller horror film is a familiar way to get a film like this financed and sold.

Confirmed Casting: Film and Television

Jennifer Ehle, Peter Mullan and Holliday Grainger join Kenneth Branagh in Laird

• Confirmed: Paramount+ announced seven new cast members on Thursday 15 October
• New cast: Jennifer Ehle, Peter Mullan, Phia Saban, Ruaridh Mollica, Holliday Grainger, Douglas Hodge and Corey Mylchreest
• The story: A modern family saga in which the Laird of Castle Drummoch (Branagh) refuses to sell his ancestral lands to an American billionaire (Peter Sarsgaard) who is buying up the glens
• UK availability: Will premiere globally on Paramount+, which is available in the UK. Filming is under way in Scotland and London. UK date not yet confirmed

Laird comes from Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, the brothers behind MobLand and The Agency, with Georgia Lee, and Joe Wright is attached to direct the first episode. This week’s additions make it one of the most British casts of any streaming drama this year. Peter Mullan is a Scottish screen great, Holliday Grainger is Robin Ellacott in the BBC’s Strike, Phia Saban was Helaena in House of the Dragon, and Corey Mylchreest was the young King George in Queen Charlotte.

Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice, brings period-drama star power to a story that is really about land and inheritance. Look out too for Ruaridh Mollica, who is also in Marvel’s VisionQuest, now streaming on Disney+.

Mary-Louise Parker joins Julia Garner in Apple TV’s Guilty Creatures

• Confirmed: Parker has a recurring role, Deadline reported on Monday 19 October; her character is being kept under wraps
• The story: Based on Mikita Brottman’s true-crime book about two adulterous, God-fearing young lovers in the Florida Panhandle who commit a murder and live with it for 18 years
• Cast and crew: Julia Garner stars and executive produces, with Lewis Pullman and Maddie Hasson. Craig Gillespie directs, Stuart Zicherman is showrunner and Sarah DeLappe adapted the book
• UK availability: Will stream on Apple TV, which is available in the UK. No release date yet. UK date not yet confirmed

Parker is having a busy autumn. She also plays the chilling Ms Sigsby in MGM+’s Stephen King adaptation The Institute, whose second season starts in the US on Sunday 8 November, as we reported when the season two date was announced.

The behind-the-camera team is the main attraction. Gillespie made I, Tonya and the series Pam & Tommy, both of which turned true stories into dark, sometimes funny drama, and Garner won three Emmys for Ozark. Adding an actor with Parker’s gift for brittle comedy suggests the series will follow the same tone.

Daniel Henney joins James Marsden and Norman Reedus in Apple TV’s Disavowed

• Confirmed: Variety reported the casting on Thursday 15 October
• The role: Henney plays Jae Chun, a successful lawyer to high-profile clients
• The story: Marsden plays legendary CIA officer Brad Griffin, who is fired in the middle of a hunt for the assassin who killed his colleague, and goes after the $15 million bounty on the killer’s head himself
• UK availability: Will stream on Apple TV, which is available in the UK. No release date yet. UK date not yet confirmed

Disavowed was created by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, two of the writers of the first Iron Man film. With Marsden, Reedus and Bokeem Woodbine of Fargo already on board, it is an action thriller with a cast built for a broad audience.

For Henney, it is a new TV role after The Wheel of Time, in which he played the warder Lan Mandragoran, came to an end on Prime Video. Genre fans may also know him as the voice of Tadashi in Big Hero 6.

Patrick Schwarzenegger to lead tennis match-fixing thriller The Journeyman

• Confirmed: AGC Studios set Schwarzenegger and Leslie Grace on Monday 19 October, Deadline reported
• The story: A down-on-his-luck tennis pro is drawn into the dark world of match-fixing to support his family; Grace plays his fiercely loyal fiancée
• Behind it: Ángel Manuel Soto, director of DC’s Blue Beetle and The Wrecking Crew, directs from a script by The Roberts, with revisions by Ozark co-creator Bill Dubuque
• UK availability: No distributor yet; AGC will sell the film at next month’s American Film Market. UK date not yet confirmed

The project has been around for a while; a couple of years ago it had Dev Patel attached, with Tarsem Singh directing. Schwarzenegger, of The White Lotus, is on a roll this year. His romance Love of Your Life is streaming on Prime Video in the UK, and he is currently filming Mike Birbiglia’s comedy Old Friends New Friends.

Tennis is suddenly everywhere on screen. Challengers proved there was an audience for it, and in the last week alone we have reported on Prime Video’s Andre Agassi drama Rally. The Journeyman looks set to be the grittier take.

Mindy Kaling steps in front of the camera for Running Point season 3

• Confirmed: Netflix’s basketball comedy has cast its co-creator in a recurring role, Deadline reported on Monday 19 October
• The role: Divya, the outspoken CEO of a popular gambling app, who becomes a thorn in Isla Gordon’s (Kate Hudson) side all season
• Also new: Hudson makes her TV directing debut on the season premiere. The season is filming in Los Angeles
• UK availability: Earlier episodes stream on Netflix in the UK. Season 3 has no date yet

Kaling co-created the show and writes and produces it, and she said in April that “nothing would make me happier” than joining the cast. She follows fellow writer Ike Barinholtz, who played cousin Benny in season 2.

Divya is an interesting choice of character. Like Isla, she is the first woman to run a business in a male-dominated world, so the show can set up a rivalry between two women who have a lot in common and treat each other as competition.

Talks and Reports

These are not confirmed deals yet. The week’s biggest casting negotiation, Keanu Reeves in talks to join James Wan’s The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, was in this morning’s Morning News, and we will report back when it is confirmed. We have left out unverified fan reports and social media rumours about superhero casting.

Which of this week’s castings are you most excited about: Lauren Cohan’s return to Skybound, or Kenneth Branagh’s Highland cast?