Helen McCrory joins cast of His Dark Materials
The Peaky Blinders and Harry Potter star will play Lord Asriel's daemon Stelmaria
Philip Pullman adaptation His Dark Materials already had a pretty starry cast including Lin-Manuel Miranda and James McAvoy, and now another familiar face has been added to the line-up – veteran character actor Helen McCrory, whose casting was announced in the wake of the new trailer launch at San Diego Comic-Con.
McCrory (best known for playing Aunt Polly in the BBC’s Peaky Blinders and Narcissa Malfoy in the last three Harry Potter films) will voice Stelmaria, the snow leopard dæmon of James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel, and is the first big voice role revealed in a series full of non-human characters.
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Other notable characters in this vein include armoured bear/ panserbjørn Iorek Byrnison and other Dæmons (external human souls in animal form) including the unnamed golden monkey of Mrs Coulter, Lee Scoresby’s (Lin-Manuel Miranda) Arctic Hare dæmon Hester and many others.
Hopefully, we’ll have announcements soon concerning these other voice-only roles – but for now, it’s good to see a stellar cast get even more Stelmariar.
His Dark Materials comes to BBC1 in winter 2019
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
