This August on Epix, CDA’s Emily Hampshire plays ‘Rebecca Morgan’ in CHAPELWAITE, based off of Jerusalem’s Lot by Stephen King. Emily plays opposite Adrien Brody. An exclusive article on Vanity Fair has a first look at the series:
“Expanding King’s short fiction into a 10-episode series meant adding several more characters and story lines, which is why the Filardi brothers gave a family of three children to the widowed Boone, along with a new confidante: a free-thinking woman named Rebecca Morgan, played by Emily Hampshire (best known as the hotel manager Stevie from Schitt’s Creek.)
Morgan is a disruptive presence in Preacher’s Corners, the nearest (populated) town to Chapelwaite. She’s a college-educated woman, a journalist who writes for The Atlantic, and her outspokenness is a threat to the Old World patriarchal establishment that rules the region.
If it feels surprising to see Hampshire in a period piece, the showrunners say that was part of the reason they chose her. “She’s known for comedy, but we’d seen her other stuff, like [the series] 12 Monkeys, and we really liked her ability to go back and forth between comedy and drama,” said Jason Filardi. “She’s wonderfully quirky in real life.”
“We have this strange world, and she’s a modern bolt of energy in it,” added Peter.
Rebecca defies the will of her family and decides to become a governess and teacher to the newcomers, in part because the town has chosen to shun Boone and his children.”