Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, and Connie Britton will join Robert De Niro in the cast of Netflix’s upcoming thriller Zero Day. It’s a Friday Night Lights reunion for Plemons and Britton.
Caplan is set to play Alexandra Mullen, a young Congresswoman who has sought to distance herself from her father’s political legacy. Plemons will play Roger Carlson, a former Mullen “body man” seeking a return to the national stage alongside Mullen. Allen is Sheila Mullen, a former First Lady and nominee to the federal bench whose professional ambitions take a backseat to her husband’s political career. And finally, Britton plays Valerie Whitesell, a savvy, intelligent political operative who was Mullen’s former Chief of Staff.
They join De Niro as the lead as George Mullen, a massively popular but complicated former American President who is pulled from retirement to head a commission tasked with investigating a devastating global cyber-attack.
“Zero Day asks the question on everyone’s mind — how do we find truth in a world in crisis,” says the show’s official logline. “One seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control? And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even of our own imagining?”
Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland, Mad Men, and Love & Death) will direct all episodes. Executive producers include De Niro, Oppenheim, Jonathan Glickman under his production company Panoramic Media, and Glatter.
Showrunner Newman has a long-running relationship with Netflix, having produced Narcos for the streamer. That series’ success led to him handling the follow-up, Narcos: Mexico. Newman also has producer credits on The Watcher, Painkillers, and True Story.
Zero Day, TBA, Netflix