After playing creepy death row inmate Wendall Jelks on AMC’s “Rectify,” actor Jayson Warner Smith has been cast alongside Maisie Williams in the indie drama “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” TheWrap has learned.
Jessica Biel and Jason Sudeikis star alongside Mary Steenburger, Orlando Jones and Williams, who is best known for playing Arya Stark on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
Bill Purple is directing from a script he co-wrote with Robbie Pickering. The film also boasts the involvement of Justin Timberlake, who is supervising the soundtrack and composing original music for the movie.
Sudeikis plays an architect who, after losing his wife (Biel) in a tragic car accident, sets out to build a raft for a homeless teenager (Williams) so she can sail to a far away island. Smith will play Williams’ drunk, abusive uncle.
Biel is producing with Michelle Purple under their Iron Ocean Films banner, and production started earlier this week in New Orleans.
Smith is a veteran character actor who recently appeared in “Anchorman 2,” “42” and on the CW’s “Vampire Diaries.” He also just had two movies play at Sundance — “Mississippi Grind” with Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn, and “99 Homes” with Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon — and will soon be seen in Tom Hiddleston’s Hank Williams movie “I Saw the Light.”
Smith is represented by the Alexander White Agency.