Jodie Comer to Lead Damon Lindelof's HBO Limited Series 'The Chain'
The former Killing Eve star will play a suburban mother facing an impossible choice.
Multi-award-winning Jodie Comer (The Death of Robin Hood) has booked her next big prestige TV role. The Emmy, BAFTA, Tony, and Olivier Award-winning actress is set to star in the forthcoming eight-part HBO limited series The Chain, a drama from buzzy showrunner Damon Lindelof.
Though Lindelof rose to fame as one of the showrunners of the hit ABC sci-fi series Lost, in subsequent years, he’s become known for his work on high-concept dramas like Watchmen and The Leftovers. The subject matter of The Chain is precisely the morally complicated story he’s already proven to excel at telling.
Based on Adrian McKinty’s 2019 novel of the same name, The Chain follows Rachel, a suburban mother forced into an impossible choice when her daughter is kidnapped. Shockingly, however, the kidnapping is not an isolated incident but part of a terrifying ongoing sequence of events that forces each victim’s parents to abduct someone else’s child for their own to be released. If they fail or refuse to participate, their child will be killed.
“From the moment I heard the wild and original premise of Adrian’s book, I was shocked, surprised, and angry that I hadn’t thought of it myself. I’ve always wanted to try to adapt a great thriller, and this one has all the dark, weird, exhilarating touches that fire up my imagination,” Lindelof said in a statement when the series was first announced. “I feel so fortunate to reteam with Francesca, Casey, and Michael, who first brought me to HBO fifteen years ago, and I can’t wait to make The Chain a memorable link in their outstanding legacy.”
Here’s the book’s synopsis.
It's something parents do every morning: Rachel Klein drops her daughter at the bus stop and heads into her day. But a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything: it's a woman on the line, informing her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a ransom, and find another child to abduct. This is no ordinary kidnapping: the caller is a mother herself, whose son has been taken, and if Rachel doesn't do as she's told, the boy will die.
"You are not the first. And you will certainly not be the last."Rachel is now part of The Chain, an unending and ingenious scheme that turns victims into criminals—and is making someone else very rich in the process. The rules are simple, the moral challenges impossible; find the money fast, find your victim, and then commit a horrible act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just twenty-four hours ago.
But what the masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. It turns out that kidnapping is only the beginning.
Comer is best known for her Emmy-winning turn as the assassin Villanelle on BBC America drama Killing Eve, but has an impressive resume that includes The Bikeriders, The Last Duel, Doctor Foster, and The White Princess. She’s the only cast member currently announced.
Lindelof is the series’s writer, showrunner, and executive producer of The Chain, which, per Deadline, is set to expand the book’s mythology. It’s the first project to result from the two-year overall deal he signed with the network last year.
The pilot story is by Lindelof, Carly Wray, and Breannah Gibson, with Lindelof and Wray writing the pilot script. Other executive producers include Michael Ellenberg and Lindsey Springer of Media Res, as well as McKinty, Gibson, Shane Salerno, and Joseph Iberti.
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