EXCLUSIVE: Great Expectations has found its Young Pip.
FX and the BBC’s upcoming adaptation from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has cast up-and-comer Tom Sweet in the role. He will star as the main character in the first two episodes mainly opposite Olivia Colman, who is playing Miss Havisham.
Sweet also starred as young Robert Catesby in the first three episodes of BBC One’s Gunpowder, which aired in 2017. Film credits include Where Hands Touch, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and Enjoy.
Sweet will be replaced from episode three onwards by Black Mirror Bandersnatch star Fionn Whitehead, at which point Pip grows up.
The highly-anticipated Dickens’ adaptation’s cast also includes Ashley Thomas, Johnny Harris, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Hayley Squires, Owen McDonnell, Trystan Gravelle and Matt Berry.
Knight is a huge Dickens fan who has said Peaky Blinders owes much to the author.
He is also exec producing the six-parter, which comes from Scott Free Productions and also counts Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott as execs.
Airing next year, the show is the second high profile Dickens adaptation to come from the U.S. network and UK public broadcaster, following 2019’s A Christmas Carol, which was also written by Knight.
