Spike Lee has started casting his new Civil War… | Little White Lies

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Spike Lee has start­ed cast­ing his new Civ­il War drama

16 Apr 2019

Words by Charles Bramesco

Four men, one wearing a cap, discussing outdoors in wooded area.
Four men, one wearing a cap, discussing outdoors in wooded area.
Lucy Hale and Lucas Till are the first actors attached to Son of the South.

Nev­er one to rest on his lau­rels, Spike Lee has already begun work on the nar­ra­tive fol­low-up to one of his biggest suc­cess­es in mem­o­ry. The Acad­e­my Award for Best Adapt­ed Screen­play that BlacK­kKlans­man earned him has yet to begin col­lect­ing dust on the man­tle, and Spike’s on to the next.

Vari­ety has the exclu­sive that Lucy Hale and Lucas Till have joined the pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly under­way in Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma, the lat­est addi­tions to a cast that includes Cedric the Enter­tain­er, Sharonne Lanier, and Julia Ormond.

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The film adapts Bob Zellner’s mem­oir, ​‘The Wrong Side of Mur­der Creek: A White South­ern­er in the Free­dom Move­ment’; as the title sug­gests, Till will por­tray Zell­ner as he drifts out of his culture’s hotbed of racism and into the Civ­il Rights brigade still nascent in 1961.

Hale will play Zellner’s col­lege girl­friend, who sup­port­ed him as they both became objects of scorn for a com­mu­ni­ty set in their prej­u­di­cial ways. She’s on some­thing of a hot streak right now, hav­ing recent­ly land­ed the lead role in Katy Keene, a spin­off of smash-hit teen soap Riverdale.

Till has a spot­ti­er record, hav­ing impressed in Park Chan-wook​‘s Stok­er and what­ev­er the oppo­site of impressed is in Mon­ster Trucks (which is about a mon­ster liv­ing inside a truck). Lee knows how to direct his actors, how­ev­er, and can coax out a strong per­for­mance from who­ev­er he selects, Mon­ster Trucks or no.

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