Homeland's Rupert Friend Joins Occult Period Drama Strange Angel

Homeland star Rupert Friend is joining the cast of CBS All Access' upcoming based-on-a-true-story occult drama Strange Angel, the streaming service announced Wednesday.

Friend will play Ernest Donovan, who CBS All Access describes as "the enigmatic neighbor of Jack Parsons (portrayed by Jack Reynor) who becomes the young scientist's tour guide into the illicit underbelly of 1930s Los Angeles. A lost soul and drifter, Donovan pulls Parsons out of his humdrum existence and into a strange new religion that encourages its followers to pursue their deepest and darkest desires as a means of bending the world to their will."

Friend will join Transformers' Reynor, who it was previously announced will star as Jack Parsons, who was a pioneering rocket scientist by day and occultist by night. Parsons co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He was also a follower of famous black magician Aleister Crowley and used his fortune to advance the new religious movement Thelema in America. His wife left him for his friend L. Ron Hubbard, who would later create Scientology. His life was truly one-of-a-kind. He died in 1952 in a mysterious home lab explosion.

Strange Angel is being adapted by Black Swan screenwriter Mark Heyman from George Pendle's book of the same name and executive-produced by David DiGilio, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker and A Ghost Story's David Lowery, who will direct.

Friend is best known for playing CIA operative Peter Quinn on Showtime's spy drama Homeland, for which he received an Emmy nomination in 2013. He made a very patriotic exit from the show in last year's Season 6 finale.

Strange Angel does not have a premiere date yet.

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