(Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna)
ABC’s crime anthology series will be returning to ABC and it has a new co-star for the second season. André Benjamin, also known as André 3000 from the hip hop duo Outkast, will be joining American Crime for its sophomore season according to The Hollywood Reporter.
For its first season, American Crime has been nominated for ten Emmys; the most for any broadcast show. The show was created by Academy Award winning writer, John Ridley (12 Years a Slave). Returning cast members for the second season include Elvis Nolasco (Oldboy), Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People), Richard Cabral (End of Watch), Regina King (The Boondocks), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), and Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under). In addition to André Benjamin, there will be more new faces on the cast for the second season. Including Joey Pollari (The Inbetweeners), Connor Jessup (Falling Skies), and newcomer Angelique Rivera.
Acting is not new to the performer, Benjamin has appeared in both film and television previously. In American Crime, Benjamin will play Michael Lacroix an architect. He will co-star next to series returner, Regina King; King will play his wife Terri. The power couple is a strong part of their community and their son is who the crime centers around. The couple has “both the financial means, as well as the acumen needed to fiercely defend their son when he becomes entangled in a scandal at an elite private school” (via Access Hollywood). For the second season, the show will be set in the midwest and it will focus on physicality, sexual identity, and societal issues.
But this isn’t the first time André Benjamin and creator of American Crime, John Ridley, have worked together. John Ridley wrote and directed the 2013 Jimi Hendrix film, All is by my Side, which Benjamin starred in. Ridley made a statement about the recent addition to American Crime, “Personally, I couldn’t be more excited than to work again with André… He is an amazing individual, a true artist, and All is by my Side is one of the reasons I was given the reins on American Crime. Folks at ABC were absolutely moved by André’s performance in the film, and by the overall language of cinema we used in telling the story,” Ridley even when on to comment that “it’s fair to say American Crime might not exist were it not for our previous collaboration” (Access Hollywood).
American Crime, now starring Outkast’s André Benjamin, will return to ABC in 2016.