TNT is beefing up the cast of its upcoming mystery drama, The Alienist. Deadline reports Antonio Magro is joining in a recurring role. He joins Sean Astin, Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, Dakota Fanning, Robert Wisdom, Q’orianka Kilcher, Matt Lintz, Matthew Shear, and Douglas Smith.

The Alienist is a TV show adaptation of Caleb Carr’s best-seller. According to the report, Magro will play Paul Kelly, “a well-spoken ‘gentlemen mob boss’, and founder of the notorious Five Points Gang.”

About The Alienist TV Series | TNT

Here’s more on The Alienist, from an early TNT press release:

Based on the international best-selling novel by Caleb Carr, The Alienist is a psychological thriller set in the Gilded Age of New York City in 1896, a city of vast wealth, extreme poverty and technological innovation. When a series of haunting, gruesome murders of boy prostitutes grips the city, newly appointed police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt [Astin] calls upon criminal psychologist (aka alienist) Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and newspaper illustrator John Moore (Evans) to conduct the investigation in secret.

They are aided by a makeshift crew of singular characters, among them the intrepid Sara Howard (Fanning), a young secretary on Roosevelt’s staff who is determined to become the first female police detective in New York City. Using the emerging disciplines of psychology and early forensic investigation techniques, this band of social outsiders tracks down one of New York City’s first serial killers.

Astin will play the brilliant, ambitious, but principled Theodore Roosevelt, a crusading reformist determined to clear up corruption in the police force he now heads. While usually inured to crime in New York, Roosevelt becomes outraged over the fact that children are being murdered in his city and develops a warlike zeal to find the perpetrator.

What do you think? How do you like the sound of The Alienist TV series? Do you plan to check it out when it premieres on TNT?