The ‘House of Cards’ actress could finally headline a show that lets her great dramatic skill set shine, but this has to be her most unlikable role yet.
FX is developing A Teacher, a limited series based on Hannah Fidell’s buzzy Sundance feature, with Kate Mara attached to star and executive produce.
Mara, known for her role as Zoe Barnes on Netflix’s House of Cards, is already in the FX family, playing the starring role of Patty Bowes on the Ryan Murphy series Pose. She is repped by UTA and Mosaic.
A TV series adaptation of A Teacher was originally set up at HBO in 2014 with no acting talent attached.
Hannah Fidell has had a penchant for pushing buttons from the very beginning of her career. Her big debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 happened with A Teacher, a film that tracks an unraveling protagonist who begins a sexual affair with one of her students. Needless to say, to call such a subject matter “confronting” and “controversial” feels flippant.
Fidell’s feature attempts to unpack knotty emotional and ethical quandaries through a dubious premise. Regardless, although a beautifully shot film, just sitting through the full 75 minutes of A Teacher is a trying experience due to its topical sensitivities and emotional distress. So, how could anyone possibly handle an entire series’ worth of morally suspect indiscretions?
Perhaps that could be possible with the assistance of Kate Mara. Deadline has reported that the actress best-known on the small screen for House of Cards and American Horror Story: Murder House will headline a limited series based on A Teacher. Fidell will return to script, direct, and executive produce the show, which is in development at FX.
The basic plot of the serialized version of A Teacher remains the same as that of the film, with Mara taking on the titular role. That said, the very brief synopsis for this adaptation already expands on the bare-bones nature of its source material in a favorable way. The series evidently aims to actually examine the power imbalances that come into play within its central illicit relationship. Issues of “consent, abuse of power, [and] victimhood” will be addressed as the affair is unearthed and made known to the community at large.
As a matter of fact, Mara excels at taking on thankless roles. In American Horror Story, she portrays Hayden McClaine, an over-the-top villainous disruption in the lives of the season’s principal characters, the Harmon family. Hayden was once caught up in a fling with patriarch Ben Harmon (who was once her college professor). She resurfaces in his life after their extended rendezvous results in pregnancy and becomes a literal embodiment of consequence that Ben would much rather eradicate. Audiences are inclined to feel this way, too, if not for Ben’s sake but his family’s. Mara plays Hayden’s unstable personality with demented vindictiveness, which lends a layer of unpredictability and formidability to her appearances throughout the season’s proceedings.
Timelier than ever in the #MeToo era, A Teacher is an exploration of consent, abuse of power, victimhood and the inevitable consequences that occur throughout a community after a female high school teacher (Mara) and her student are caught having an affair. FX Productions is the studio.
Mara will play the role played in the film by Lindsay Burdge.
(Excerpts) Read More at: FilmSchoolRejects.com and Deadline.com