FX's Far Cry Series Adds Brendan Gleeson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and More to Its All-Star Cast
FX's live-action Far Cry series started filming on September 14, and the network has now revealed most of the first season's cast. Five new names join a lineup that already included Rob McElhenney, Lizzy Caplan, and Steve Buscemi — and the roster leans heavily on actors Noah Hawley has worked with before.
The cast
The five additions, confirmed by Variety cast announcement, are:
- Brendan Gleeson — Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films, General Brigham in Edge of Tomorrow - Jennifer Jason Leigh — Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight, Selena St. George in Dolores Claiborne - Hamish Linklater — Father Paul in Midnight Mass, Clark Debussy in Legion - Sam Spruell — Jack McVitie in Legend, Charlie in The Hurt Locker - Jamie Demetriou — Stath in Stath Lets Flats, the Mattel exec in Barbie
They join McElhenney, who is also co-creator and executive producer, alongside Buscemi — best known to US audiences as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, a role that earned him two Emmy nominations.
That’s a suspicious amount of talent in one place.
— FARCRY (@FarCrygame) September 18, 2026
Brendan Gleeson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hamish Linklater, Sam Spruell and Jamie Demetriou join FX’s Far Cry TV show.
What could possibly go wrong? pic.twitter.com/NAd5w7gCGZ
Hawley's formula, not game canon
The creative approach here is the real story. Hawley — whose Fargo series ran five acclaimed seasons by treating the Coen Brothers' world as a jumping-off point rather than a script — is applying the same logic to Far Cry. Each season will tell a self-contained story with a new cast and setting, with no direct tie to any Ubisoft game's plot. Per Gagadget production start, Hawley has been explicit: faithfully adapting any single Far Cry game would miss the point. He's after the franchise's spirit — escalating chaos, morally murky antagonists, open-world menace — not its storylines.
That's a sensible call. Far Cry 5 and 6 already trained players to accept radically different settings between entries, so the anthology structure shouldn't alienate the game's 100-million-strong fanbase.
What's still unknown
Character names and plot details for Season 1 remain under wraps. No release date has been set, and 2027 is the earliest realistic window — Hawley is currently managing post-production on Alien: Earth simultaneously, which could push things further. The show streams on Hulu in the US and Disney+ internationally when it does arrive.