Oscar winner Anna Paquin is switching from one period project to another. The “True Blood” star, who will next be seen in Sarah Polley’s “Alias Grace” miniseries on Netflix, has signed on to star in “Tell it to the Bees” alongside Holliday Grainger (“My Cousin Rachel”), Deadline reports. “D.O.A.” director Annabel Jankel will helm the project, an adaptation of Fiona Shaw’s 2009 novel of the same name.
Paquin will portray Dr. Jean Markham, a woman who returns home to run her late father’s medical practice. “When a school-yard scuffle lands young Charlie (newcomer Gregor Selkirk) in her office, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and to tell his secrets to the bees as she once did,” Deadline summarizes. “The friendship between the boy and the doctor brings his mother Lydia (Grainger) into Jean’s world. The women find themselves drawn to one another in a way that Jean recognizes and fears, and which Lydia could never have expected. But in 1950s small-town Britain, the secret won’t stay hidden forever.”
“Tell it to the Bees” will co-star Kate Dickie (Alice Lowe’s “Prevenge”), Lauren Lyle (“Outlander”), Emun Elliott (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”), and Steven Robertson (“T2: Trainspotting”).
Principal photography has already kicked off in Scotland.
Sisters and collaborators Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth (“Dixi,” “Fresh Meat”) wrote the screenplay for “Tell it to the Bees,” which Jankel describes as “an unholy mash-up of 1950s social and magical realism.”
Jankel is producing the project alongside Daisy Allsop, Nick Hill, and Nik Bower. Alison Owen, Lizzie Francke, Sunny Vohra, Deepak Nayar, and Ben Roberts serve as EPs.
Paquin’s recent projects include “Bellevue,” the Jane Maggs and Adrienne Mitchell-created CBC crime drama centered around the disappearance of a transgender teen. Besides “Alias Grace,” you can catch her next in “The Parting Glass,” a drama following a grieving family as they travel to collect their late sister’s belongings.
Grainger appears next in the Alicia Vikander-led romance “Tulip Fever,” out August 25.
