By Tyler Aquilina
February 25, 2021
O-T Fagbenle is getting presidential for his next role.
The Black Widow and The Handmaid’s Tale star has been cast as Barack Obama in Showtime’s upcoming anthology series The First Lady, EW has confirmed. Fagbenle will star opposite Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, with Gillian Anderson and Michelle Pfeiffer rounding out the central cast as Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Ford, respectively.
The show’s first season will focus on the personal and political lives of Obama, Ford, and Roosevelt, tracing “their journeys to Washington through an enlightening intimacy,” according to an official plot description.
Fagbenle, who will next appear as Rick Mason in Marvel’s Black Widow, now becomes the latest actor to embody former President Obama, following Kingsley Ben-Adir in Showtime’s 2020 limited series The Comey Rule, among others.
The cast of The First Lady also includes Aaron Eckhart as President Gerald Ford; Judy Greer as Nancy Howe, Betty Ford’s trusted confidante and social secretary; Jayme Lawson as young Michelle Obama; Kristine Forseth as young Betty Ford; and Rhys Wakefield as President Ford’s Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney. Susanne Bier (HBO’s The Undoing) will direct every episode of season 1, with author Aaron Cooley, who created the series, writing.