Annette Bening has joined the cast of “Katrina: American Crime Story,” Ryan Murphy’s followup to “The People v OJ Simpson.” The actress will play Kathleen Blanco, the Louisiana governor who held office during and after the hurricane. Bening is the first to sign on to the second installment of the crime series.
One of the biggest questions surrounding such a famous disaster has been which major political players will be portrayed in the fictionalized, scripted series.
“Yes, you’ll have the famous people, and also people who weren’t famous during Katrina,” executive producer Brad Simpson said during TCA in August, declining to confirm whether people like George W. Bush, president at the time in 2004, would be included.
“We’re looking at it to be tonally and thematically incredibly different [from Season 1],” Simpson continued. “Really it’s going to be about two things, one is just the intensity of what it’s like to be there on the ground, to be in the pressure cooker, but also thematically, the bigger crime — that Katrina was something that was predictable, that we weren’t prepared for, but we knew was going to happen. It turns a lens back on America, and shows some uncomfortable truths about it. We’re about to get scripts in, so we’ll know who the main characters will be.”
Murphy, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson serve as Executive Producers on “Katrina: American Crime Story,” which is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions.
The third installment, titled “Versace/Cunanan,” will tackle the 1997 murder of designer Gianni Versace. “American Crime Story” recently won critical acclaim and a slew of Emmys for its first outing, “The People v. O.J. Simpson.”
