From a media release:
BET+ and CBC series THE PORTER (8×60), from Inferno Pictures and Sienna Films (a Sphere Media company) announces the addition of multiple award-winning actor Alfre Woodard to their first season as part of the cast and as executive producer. THE PORTER is currently shooting in Winnipeg, Canada.
Woodard will play the role of ‘Fay’, who runs the local brothel in St. Antoine – she’s sexy, direct and takes great pride in living life on her own terms. She joins Aml Ameen (I May Destroy You, Yardie), Ronnie Rowe Jr. (Star Trek: Discovery, Pretty Hard Cases), Mouna Traoré (Self Made, The Umbrella Academy), Oluniké Adeliyi (Titans, American Gods) and Loren Lott (American Idol, Tag).
Recently listed in a NY Times article featuring ‘The Greatest 25 Actors of the 21st Century’, Woodard has been nominated for 17 Emmy Awards (winning four), seven SAG Awards (winning three), three Golden Globe Awards (winning one), 21 NAACP awards (winning nine) and two Independent Spirit Awards (winning one). Her Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress was for her performance in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek.
Woodard recently starred in the feature film Clemency. Among the critical praise she received for her lead role in the film, she received a BAFTA Award nomination and a Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead.
Other recent film appearances include the blockbusters Captain America: Civil War for Marvel and AnnaBelle for New Line. On the small screen, she most recently starred as the fierce ‘Mariah Dillard’ in Marvel’s Luke Cage and as the title character in the Netflix Original film Juanita, which she also developed and produced. Woodard next appears in another Netflix Original film titled Fatherhood alongside Kevin Hart, and she also stars opposite Jason Mamoa in the Apple TV+ series See, created by Steven Knight. Woodard recently wrapped on the Joe and Anthony Russo directed film The Gray Man with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans.
Acclaimed dramatic performances include her roles in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, John Sayles’ Passion Fish, Maya Angelou’s Down In The Delta, Peter Bratt’s Follow Me Home, Gina Prince-Blythwood’s Love And Basketball, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn, Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon and Mumford, Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys, Billie Woodruff’s Beauty Shop with Queen Latifah, Richard Donner’s Scrooged opposite Bill Murray, as well as Mandela and Miss Evers’ Boys (both for HBO Films).
Set in the early 1920s, THE PORTER offers a dramatic and compelling look at the Black community in St. Antoine, Montreal — known, at the time, as the “Harlem of the North”. The story is told through the eyes of two Black train porters taking very different paths to liberation. One pushes to create the first Black union in existence, the other chases power on the wrong side of the law, but both have the same goal: to free themselves and their families from oppression. They’re young, gifted and Black, from Canada, the Caribbean, and the U.S., and over the course of the series they find themselves thrown together north and south of the color line. In an era that boasts anything is possible, if change isn’t coming for them, they will come for it.
From Montreal to Chicago and at every stop in between, in a time of extraordinary social and political change, THE PORTER tells the story of the people who fought to ignite the civil rights movement in North America.
A CBC and BET+ original series, THE PORTER is originated and created by Arnold Pinnock (Altered Carbon, Travelers) and Bruce Ramsay (19-2, Cardinal), with Annmarie Morais (Killjoys, Ransom, American Soul), Marsha Greene (Ten Days In The Valley, Mary Kills People) and Aubrey Nealon (Snowpiercer, Cardinal), and produced by Winnipeg-based Inferno Pictures Inc. and Sphere Media’s Sienna Films. Morais and Greene are showrunners and executive producers. Charles Officer (Akilla’s Escape, Coroner) and R.T. Thorne (Blindspot, Utopia Falls) will direct the series, and are executive producers. Pinnock also serves as an executive producer, and Ramsay a co-executive producer. Jennifer Kawaja serves as Executive Producer for Sienna Films and Ian Dimerman as Executive Producer for Inferno Pictures. The series is written by Morais, Greene, Andrew Burrows-Trotman, Priscilla White, Pinnock and Ramsay, with Thorne participating in the writers’ room. The series is funded with the support of the Canada Media Fund and Manitoba Film & Music and is distributed internationally by Abacus Media Rights (AMR) and Sphere Distribution.
