David Farnor | On 09, Mar 2020

Netflix has found the cast for its new female-driven spy thriller In from the Cold.

Directed by Ami Canaan Mann and created by Adam Glass (Supernatural, The Chi), the eight-hour drama follows a single mother in suburban New Jersey, whose life is turned upside down when the FBI arrests her and forces her to make a choice: confront her long-buried past as a highly trained, bio-engineered Russian agent, and become an asset against Russia’s underworld drug trade, and shadow war on U.S. elections — or put her family and the new life she has built at risk.

Margarita Levieva stars as Jenny, who, during a European vacation with her daughter, finds her facing her past as a the product of a secret KGB experiment that endowed her with special abilities.

She’s joined by Ivanna Sakhno (The Spy Who Dumped Me, Pacific Rim) as Anya, a young Russian Intelligence agent, who is precariously caught between her domineering mentor trying to keep her bound to the lies of the Soviet past, and the liberating promise of the “New Russia” that seems so very possible in the early-1990s.

Cillian O’Sullivan (Vikings, The Blacklist) plays Chaunchey, a rogue CIA agent who hunts down and compels a long lost, top-secret Russian Intelligence asset, code-named “The Whisper”, to switch her allegiances and help him settle his own personal vendetta.

Lydia Fleming plays Becca, a competitive teen figure skater, who, like every teenager, is wrestling with her own sense of identity. Little does she know that her own mother is a secret spy, and little does her mother know that she feels the need to act out on her darker impulses.

Charles Brice (Homeland, Harry Haft) plays Chris, a computer hacker who, despite his best efforts, is conscripted into working as Chauncey Lew’s right-hand man, and becomes his moral compass when the rogue CIA agent is baited and blinded by vengeance.

Completing the cast is Alyona Khmelnitskaya (Hearts of Three) as Svetlana, a former KGB field operative turned SVR instructor and handler in the early 1990s. Her own broken dreams and cultish devotion to “Old Russia” are what fuel a maniacal obsession with ensuring that her young protégée, Anya, is willing to sacrifice everything for her country.

Production will start in Madrid this month.

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