Leslie Mann To Star In Amazon Series ‘The Power’ Based On Naomi Alderman’s Book

Nellie Andreeva

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EXCLUSIVE: In her first major TV role, Leslie Mann (The Other Woman, This Is 40) is set as a lead in The Power, Amazon’s 10-episode global thriller drama series based on Naomi Alderman’s feminist sci-fi book, from Jane Featherstone’s Sister (Chernobyl). Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale) is directing and executive producing The Power, which will premiere worldwide on Amazon Prime Video in over 200 countries and territories

Adapted for screen by Alderman, who is working alongside an all-female writers’ room, in The Power, all teenage girls in the world develop the power to electrocute people at will. It’s hereditary, it’s inbuilt, and it can’t be taken away from them. Coming alive to the thrill of pure power: the ability to hurt or even kill by releasing electrical jolts from their fingertips, they rapidly learn they can awaken the Power in older women. Soon enough nearly every woman in the world can do it. And then everything is different.

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The subversive, multi-stranded narrative follows a series of characters including Allie, a vulnerable American foster kid who reinvents herself as a faith leader; Roxy, the daughter of a London crime boss, who revels in her new abilities; Tunde, a Nigerian journalist reporting on seismic global change; and Margot Cleary – Lopez (Mann), Mayor of Seattle; loving wife and doting mother to three kids. At least that’s what her official campaign website would tell you.

Mann’s Margot is a politician on the rise and until now, not only a woman in a man’s world, but one with a questionable taste in jackets according to online trolls. Vital, charming and incredibly smart, Margot comes to see that power resides with strength rather than authority. As her career takes flight, it’s her husband Rob and daughter Jos who privately feel the effects of her success most keenly; for one of them, where previously there was conflict now comes a greater understanding, and for the other where there was love, comes hurt and betrayal.

The Power was created by Alderman, who is leading an all-female writers’ room that includes co-executive producer Claire Wilson (Rocks, Little Drummer Girl), co-executive producer and story consultant Sarah Quintrell (Ellen, The Trial: A Murder in the Family), Whit Anderson (Ozark, Daredevil), Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen, PEN15) and novelist Rebecca Levene (The Hollow Gods Trilogy).

Emmy winner Featherstone executive produces with fellow Emmy winner Morano and Naomi de Pear (Don’t Forget the Driver) The series is produced by Tim Bricknell (Trust, Taboo).

Mann can currently be seen co-starring in the Edward Norton-directed Motherless Brooklyn, based on the Jonathan Lethem novel. She’s also set to star alongside Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher and Judi Dench in Blithe Spirit, the feature adaptation of the 1941 Noel Coward play. She is repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson,

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The Power, which was included in President Barack Obama’s list of his favorite books from 2017, went on to win the 2017 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as being longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize. The book has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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