According to Variety, Sam Rockwell has signed on to portray a Ku Klux Klan leader in the upcoming civil rights drama The Best of Enemies, where he’ll appear opposite Empire star Taraji P. Henson.
The Best of Enemies marks the directorial debut of Robin Bissell, an executive producer on The Hunger Games, and is based upon Osha Gray Davidson’s book The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South.
The film will see Henson as Ann Atwater, “a civil rights activist in Durham, N.C., who battled KKK leader C.P. Ellis for a decade until 1971, when the two agreed to co-chair a two-week community meeting to deal with a court-ordered school desegregation decree. That event changed both of their lives immeasurably.”
Production on The Best of Enemies is set to get underway this coming week, while the cast of the film also includes Babou Ceesay, Anne Heche, Wes Bentley, Bruce McGill, Nick Searcy, and John Gallagher Jr.
