Director Steven McQueen has added two familiar British faces to his upcoming HBO drama Codes Of Conduct. Helena Bonham Carter and Rebecca Hall will play two privileged members of New York high society in McQueen’s “provocative” series, which follows a young black man named Beverly Snow (played by newcomer Devon Terrell) who breaks into the upper echelons of society thanks to his self-confidence and a little help from Paul Dano’s “hip yet altruistic entrepreneur.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Carter (The King’s Speech, Sweeney Todd) will play Esther Kaufmann, an author and psychiatrist from a prominent Jewish family. She is the divorced mother of two adult sons who is now “living life on her own terms.” Those terms change “dramatically” when she meets Snow. Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Iron Man 3), meanwhile, will play Rebecca Rotmensen, the oldest child of a New York billionaire. She is billed as Snow’s “rival” and “his equal in guile and ruthlessness.”
Like many HBO shows, there’s a sense of ambiguous foreboding to the plot of Codes Of Conduct, but the high society setting could give the network a chance to reuse some of those Sex In The City costumes it hasn’t been able to squeeze into Game Of Thrones or True Detective. The pilot was co-written by McQueen and World War Z writer Michael Carnahan, with McQueen set to direct.