“Dirty John” and “Legion” actress Rachel Keller will replace Odessa Young in the female lead role Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe in “Heat” and “The Insider” director Michael Mann’s new drama series “Tokyo Vice” at HBO Max.
Filming had just begun on its first episode in Tokyo at the beginning of the year when the escalating coronavirus outbreak shut down production. The series now plans to restart shooting in late November.
Created and written by J.T. Rogers, and based on Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction book, the series follows a young American journalist (Elgort) working the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat in the late 1990s.
Young has pulled out due to scheduling conflicts with Keller taking over the role of Samantha, an American expat who makes her living as an upscale club hostess in the Kabukicho district, deftly navigating both salarymen, high-end customers and the Japanese Yakuza on a nightly basis.
Sexy, wry, fluent in Japanese – she keeps everyone else continually in play. Ella Rumpf and Rinko Kikuchi also star in the series with Mann slated to direct the pilot episode – marking his return to television three decades after “Miami Vice”.
Rogers, Mann, Alan Poul, Jake Adelstein, Elgort, Destin Daniel Cretton, Watanabe and John Lesher executive produce.
Source: Deadline
