Chance: Hugh Laurie’s Hulu Series Casts Diane Farr

Diane Farr has been cast in a recurring role in the Chance TV series for Hulu. The streaming service ordered two 10-episode seasons of this medical thriller, based on the Kem Nunn novel, back in January. Farr played behavioral specialist Megan Reeves, on Numb3rs, which was cancelled by CBS after six seasons.

As it was with his successful House TV series, Chance is both the show title, and the name of the doctor/main character (Dr. Eldon Chance), played by Laurie. Farr is set as Chance’s ex-wife, Christina. The cast also includes: Greta Lee, Gretchen Mol, LisaGay Hamilton, Paul Adelstein, and Stefania LaVie Owen.

Deadline describes Farr’s character: “Perpetually irritated and quick to sense criticism, Christina is now an aspiring photographer with a dyslexic personal trainer boyfriend and an endlessly renewable resentment toward her former husband.”

Wayward Pines vet, Greta Lee, was previously cast as Chance’s assistant, Lucy, reportedly, “…a former studio artist and present psychology major.”

Gretchen Mol will play the female lead, “alluring patient” Jaclyn Blackstone. Deadline says:

 

[Jaclyn] may or may not be struggling with a multiple personality disorder, Chance finds himself in the crosshairs of her abusive spouse, who also happens to be a ruthless police detective. In over his head, Chance’s decent into the city’s shadowy underbelly, all while navigating the waters of a contentious divorce and the tribulations of his teenage daughter, soon spirals into an ever deepening exploration of one of mankind’s final frontiers — the shadowy, undiscovered country of the human mind.

Mol’s Jackie/Jaclyn was referred by Stanford Neurology Clinic for complaints of memory loss and blackouts. Married to an abusive Oakland homicide detective, she says she wants to escape him – but also claims to have a secondary personality who will not allow her to leave. Chameleonic, charismatic and resourceful, Jaclyn is the kind of woman who can make sane men do insane things.

 

Paul Adelstein has been cast as Jackie’s husband, Raymond Blackstone. Deadline adds:

 

Adelstein’s Blackstone is a crooked, ruthless, dangerously well-connected and surprisingly articulate Oakland homicide detective. His life is a balancing act — he works to solve murder cases while at the same time sex-trafficking young women through the massage parlors he runs with the help of thuggish Romanian henchmen. His greatest and maybe his only weakness is his wife. And the fact she knows his secrets is far from the only reason he will — and probably already has — killed for her.

 

LisaGay Hamilton plays Chance’s friend, Berkeley psychologist Suzanne Silver. The character is described as, “Gay, direct and fiercely intelligent and perceptive, she is very concerned about Chance and the surreal events unfolding around him.”

Stefania LaVie Owen is set as Chance’s daughter, Nicole. She is said to be, “…unhappy about her parents’ divorce, confused and vulnerable to outside influences.”

Here is Simon & Schuster‘s description of Nunn’s novel, Chance:

 

From Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Kem Nunn and “principal heir to the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Nathanael West” (The Washington Post)—an intense psychological suspense novel about a San Francisco neuropsychiatrist who becomes sexually involved with a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder, whose pathological ex-husband is an Oakland homicide detective.

A dark tale involving psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence—Chance is set amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean. Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her—or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn’t quite sure—and thereby hangs his fascination with her. Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor’s carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion.

Amid San Francisco’s fluid, ever-shifting fog, in the cool, gray city of love, Dr. Chance will at last be forced to live up to his name. Chance is a twisted, harrowing, and impossible-to-put-down head trip through the fun house of fate, mesmerizing until the very last page.

 

Have you read Nunn’s novel? What do you think of the Chance TV show cast, so far? Do you plan to catch the premiere, when the series drops to Hulu?