'Tudors,' 'Dexter' Add Big Names

Zap2It.com | June 7, 2007

Peter O'Toole, 'Venus'

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Peter O'Toole, Keith Carradine join Showtime series

Multiple Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole will join the cast of Showtime's "The Tudors" next season, playing the pope who wants to excommunicate Henry VIII from the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, another Showtime series, "Dexter," has added Keith Carradine ("Deadwood," "Nashville") to its upcoming season.

O'Toole, an eight-time Oscar nominee for films such as "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Lion in Winter" and last year's "Venus," will play Pope Paul III in "The Tudors," which films in his native Ireland. "As an Irishman, I am delighted to be working on an Irish production, filming in Ireland," he says.

The conflict between the pope and Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) will be front and center next season. The church will stop Henry from marrying Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer). After Henry secretly weds Ann and invalidates his marriage to Katherine (Maria Doyle Kennedy), the pope moves to excommunicate him.

"Dexter," meanwhile, has signed Carradine to play an FBI agent in its second season; he'll appear in 11 of the 12 episodes scheduled for the fall. His character will come into contact with Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) when the FBI descends on Miami to probe a rash of dead bodies turning up in the city.

Carradine won an Oscar in 1976 for his original song "I'm Easy" from "Nashville." He played Wild Bill Hickok in the first season of HBO's "Deadwood"; other recent credits include "Complete Savages," "Into the West" and a guest role on "Criminal Minds."