Jessica Chastain will star as an activist who infiltrates online hate groups in The Savant. The fact-based eight-episode miniseries will stream on AppleTV+.
Variety reports that Chastain, fresh off her acclaimed turn as troubled country superstar Tammy Wynette in George and Tammy, will star in and executive produce the upcoming miniseries, which is based on a true story that ran in Cosmopolitan in 2019. She will play a woman known pseudonymously as "The Savant", who plunges deep into online hotbeds of hatred and bigotry, infiltrating their ranks, in order to stop large-scale terrorist attacks on the public. Andrea Stanley, who wrote the Cosmopolitan article, will consult on the series, which will be produced by Fifth Season and Anonymous Content.
After a series of TV guest appearances, Chastain broke into the mainstream in 2011 with roles in a trio of well-received films; Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, and The Help, earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the latter. The next year, she starred in the controversial CIA drama Zero Dark Thirty, earning her another Oscar nomination, and has continued to star in a steady stream of prestige fare, including Interstellar, The Martian, Crimson Peak, Molly's Game, and The Zookeeper's Wife.
Jessica Chastain Has Curated an Impressive Film & TV Career
In 2021, she earned her first Academy Award for her heart-wrenching performance as disgraced televangelist Tammy Fake Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. She's kept busy in recent years; in 2022 alone, she starred in The Good Nurse and starred in and produced the spy thriller The 355, as well as making an unpaid cameo as Judge Maryanne Trump in Armageddon Time. She has also made occasional forays into prestige TV; in addition to the aforementioned George and Tammy, she also starred alongside Oscar Isaac in HBO's Scenes from a Marriage. She can next be seen in the psychological thriller Mothers' Instinct, with Anne Hathaway.
Melissa James Gibson (House of Cards, The Americans) will write, executive produce, and showrun under her overall deal with Fifth Season. Documentarian Matthew Heineman (Retrograde, Cartel Land) will direct and executive produce, and Chastain will executive produce via her production shingle Freckle Films. Kelly Carmichael of Freckle Films and Jessica Giles, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, will also executive produce. Brian Madden, senior VP of development for Hearst Magazines (Cosmopolitan's publisher), will produce. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.