In season 4 of You, Joe meets Rhys Montrose, an ambitious politician played by Ed Speleers. An actor who was to become Hollywood’s new star if a certain movie hadn’t flopped.
In season 4 of You available since yesterday on Netflix, Joe (Penn Badgley) changes his life. New look, new profession, new identity… He meets new characters, all from a circle of wealthy people. His “friends” quickly become the target of a serial killer, who also has fun harassing Joe…
In this circle of friends is a certain Rhys Montrose, a London politician from the poor neighborhoods who managed to make his way. Joe quickly becomes friends with this man with whom he shares several points in common.
It is Ed Speleers who lends him his features. An actor you surely know if you watched Downton Abbey and Outlander, two historical series in which he played respectively Jimmy Kent and Stephen Bonnet. But long before those roles, the British actor had been cast in what was to be Hollywood’s newest heroic fantasy franchise, Eragon.
Having previously only performed as an amateur in school shows, Ed Speleers was finally chosen from 180,000 other suitors just weeks before filming began. Fox is betting a lot on the adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s bestseller. Selling two and a half million copies in North America alone, this first novel has remained ranked for eighty-seven consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Subsequently published in 38 countries, Eragon is the first book in the L’Héritage trilogy.
We follow Eragon, a young man responsible for reviving the time of the dragon riders when he discovers an egg and meets Saphira. Unfortunately for the studios and for Ed Speleers, the film released in 2006 did not have the expected success. Despite more than respectable box office results (249 million dollars earned worldwide), the very poor reviews have cooled Fox. So no sequel has emerged.
Sixteen years later, Disney wants to try its luck again, via its streaming platform. The giant is currently developing a new adaptation of Eragon. It remains to be seen whether Ed Speleers will make an appearance there, for the wink.
