Production has just wrapped on “I Am Danielle,” the latest installment in the Channel 4 anthology series I Am, starring BAFTA winner Letitia Wright (Black Panther, Guava Island), Variety reports. “I Am Danielle” will air as the second of three episodes in the second season of I Am, as reported by Variety. Wright’s co-stars include CJ Beckford (ITV’s Victoria) and Sophia Brown (Clique, Giri/Haji), according to Channel 4’s official press release.
Suranne Jones (Scott & Bailey, Doctor Foster: A Woman Scorned) was attached to the first episode of I Am‘s upcoming second season, “I Am Victoria,” in late July, as reported by Deadline. Creator Dominic Savage (The Escape, Love + Hate) reportedly co-authors each episode with the actress playing the title character, and “each story in the anthology series [has] personal resonance with its lead actress,” Stylist reports. For example, “I Am Victoria” will allegedly deal with issues surrounding mental health, topic which has featured heavily in Jones’s recent life; her late mother developed vascular dementia and Jones herself struggles with anxiety, Lumity reports. Some of the themes tackled in the first season were poverty, coercive abuse, sex work, single motherhood, and societal expectations regarding fertility, according to Stylist.
Savage’s I Am anthology series builds upon the collaborative, improvisatory style that has become his calling card. According to The Guardian, production day on Savage’s BBC One anthology series True Love had a certain spontaneity about it that achieved Savage’s social realist vision: “There is no script, just a story outline, character development and improvisation around it… Savage’s process captures the way people actually speak to each other.” In an interview for The Pilot TV Podcast, Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians, Humans), the star of “I Am Hannah” from I Am‘s critically lauded inaugural season, spoke about what it was like to work without script as a safety net: “It’s kind of terrifying, but also very freeing, and when it works… there’s an incredible kind of raw emotional power… and that’s really the beauty of it.” Savage’s roots are actually in documentary filmmaking, and he ironically became the center of a media scandal in 1998 when it came to light that he had neglected to identify certain moments in his documentary Rogue Males as invented scenarios, as opposed to real-life incidents, according to The Independent.
Wright, meanwhile, can be seen elsewhere, portraying British Black Panther leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe in the film Mangrove, directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years Slave) which reportedly arrives on Amazon Prime in the U.S. on November 20th, according to Deadline. She will also appear in the filmic follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, on December 18th.