Yesterday we reported that rapper-turned-actor Common was the first to join AMC’s new western series Hell On Wheels, as freed slave Elam. Now, Deadline reports that Anson Mount and Irish actress Dominique McElligott have also signed on as leads.
Set during the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, Hell On Wheels follows Cullen (Mount), a former slave owner and Confederate soldier driven by the desire to avenge the murder of his wife by Union soldiers. He ends up working on the railroad out in Nebraska, along with Elam (Common), and Lily Bell (McElligott), an intelligent young woman taking care of her sick husband, one of the railroad’s surveyors.
Mount has worked on several features, most recently Cook County, and just wrapped production on Straw Dogs and Burning Palms. He is perhaps best known for his turn as Assistant D.A. Jim Steele on Dick Wolf’s series Conviction. McElligott recently starred opposite Sam Rockwell in writer-director Duncan Jones‘ Moon, and just finished shooting The Guard and Blackthorn.
