True Detective Casting: Could Idris Elba Play Lead Role?
By Josh Hill
Casting news has been incredibly hard to come by when looking ahead to the next season of True Detective but it’s still fun to try and connect the dots even if they aren’t really there. For instance, one could suggest Idris Elba as a possible choice to join the cast as he has a connection to True Detective through director Cary Fukunaga having worked with him in the past — most recently on the upcoming film Beasts of No Nation.
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Of course, there’s no real link here between True Detective and Idris Elba but it’s still fun to wonder if he could work as the lead character on the show.
The short answer is yes — and there really isn’t another answer.
Elba has arrived as an actor in recent years and narrowly missed an Oscar nomination for his role as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: The Long Walk To Freedom. He’s branched out as an actor and has taken on roles both big and small, never missing a beat in any of them.
He’s a natural choice for the show and could help bring a different edge to the characters in the second season than we saw in the first, as his style of acting is so different from Matthew McConaughey yet equally as rich. There isn’t a whole lot connecting True Detective to Idris Elba but there really should be and something needs to change to make it happen.