Kyle Chandler joins Showtime’s ‘The Vatican’

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Showtime’s ‘The Vatican’ has added another top-shelf talent to its ensemble.

Kyle Chandler, Emmy Award-winning star of NBC’s Friday Night Lights, and most recently seen in Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ and Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, has joined the upcoming drama pilot for the network responsible for Outstanding Drama Series Emmy winner ‘Homeland’.

This comes hot on the heels of news that Matthew Goode has been cast in the series, which follows the power and political struggles within the modern day Catholic church. Chandler will play the pilot’s lead role, Cardinal Thomas Duffy, “the progressive and enigmatic Archbishop of New York.”

He joins a cast that already includes Goode, and ‘Lives of Others’ star Sebastian Koch, who will play Cardinal Marco Malerba, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, a character Showtime describes as the “dark prince of the Curia.”

The series is created by Paul Attanasio, with the pilot being directed by blockbuster, Academy Award-nominated director Ridley Scott.

Full story: HitFix