André Holland has been announced to join Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga in Passing, based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen.
As we reported over a year ago when the project was first announced, Passing deals with the practice of passing across racial lines to be accepted. Many lighter-skinned Black people have passed as white to escape discrimination and subjugation. Thompson and Negga will play childhood friends in Harlem. In the book, the friends, Clare (Negga) and Irene (Thompson), are biracial, and Clare lives her life as a white woman married to a rich, white man.
The film will also be the directorial debut for actress Rebecca Hall. In a prior statement, Hall said that she found the novel at a time when she “was trying to reckon creatively with some of my personal family history and the mystery surrounding my biracial grandfather on my American mother’s side.”
There is currently no word on Holland’s role. He will next star in Netflix’s The Eddy with Amandla Stenberg.
Angela Robinson is executive producing with Margot Hand and Oren Moverman as producers.
Deadline first reported Holland’s attachment to the project.
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