Darby Stanchfield
Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com

How quickly things change!  It was just reported that ‘La La Land’s Rosemarie DeWitt had been cast as Nina Locke on Netflix’s upcoming thriller series ‘Locke & Key’, but now comes word that Darby Stanchfield has actually signed on for the role.  Stanchfield is coming off of a seven-year stint playing Abby Whelan, the intelligence agent turned Chief of Staff on ‘Scandal’.  Stanchfield has also starred on ‘NCIS’, ‘Exes and Ohs’, ‘Madmen’, ‘Jericho’, and ‘General Hospital’.

Stanchfield joins Connor Jessup, Emilia Jones, and Jackson Robert Scott who portray the Locke children, Tyler, Kinsey and Bode.  ‘Locke & Key’ also stars Asha Bromfield as Zadie and Zoe Wells, Griffin Gluck as schoolmate Gabe, Sherri Saum as teacher Ellie Whedon, Kolton Stewart as captain of the hockey team Brinker Martin, and Steven Williams as another educator Joe Ridgeway.  Petrice Jones was reported to have been cast as another classmate, Scot Kavanaugh, in the same report that stated that DeWitt had been cast as Nina, so it’s unclear if that is accurate.

‘Locke & Key’ is based on the IDW comic book by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez.  After her husband Rendell is killed, Nina Locke packs up her kids and moves from Los Angeles to Rendell’s family home Keyhouse, in Massachusetts where the kids discover a set of keys that grant them magical powers, but also makes them the target of demonic forces from another dimension, who are separated from this dimension by Keyhouse and those mystic keys.

This series was developed for Hulu, but when that service passed, Netflix ordered it straight-to-series but recast almost all of the characters except or Bode, keeping ‘It’s Jackson Robert Scott in that role.  Frances O’Connor portrayed Nina Locke in the Hulu pilot.

With casting speeding up, ‘Locke & Key’ may be moving toward production.  If it begins soon, the series may be available to stream later this year.  What do you think of the casting so far?

Source: Deadline