Hulu is setting up the second season of “Castle Rock” to be a prequel to Stephen King’s “Misery” and has cast Lizzy Caplan as a younger version of Annie Wilks.
“Castle Rock” is the re-imagining of the entire King canon into one universe and touches on some of his most iconic stories and characters. The fictional Maine town sits at the center of the King universe, appearing in numerous books including “Cujo,” “The Dead Zone,” and “The Body” (the novella that “Stand By Me” was based on).
In Season 2, a feud between warring clans comes to a boil when Annie Wilkes, King’s nurse from hell, gets waylaid in Castle Rock. Wilks was played by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film “Misery” which featured Bates as a former nurse and crazed fan of James Caan’s novelist, Paul Sheldon.
Stephen King alum Tim Robbins (“The Shawshank Redemption”) will also star in the second season along with Elsie Fisher, Garrett Hedlund, Yusra Warsama, Barkhad Abdi and Matthew Alan.
Robbins will play another King character in Reginald “Pop” Merrill, from “The Sun Dog,” King’s 1990 novella. The Patriarch of Stephen King’s iconic crime family, Pop is dying of cancer and at a reckoning with his family. Hedlund will play Merrill’s son, Ace. Castle Rock’s legendary bully, Ace is taking over his uncle Pop’s businesses and threatening a fragile peace with nearby Jerusalem’s Lot.
Alan plays Chris Merrill, Pop’s nephew and Ace’s brother. Chris struggles to keep the peace between the Merrills and the Somali community.
Fisher will play Wilks’ teenage daughter, Joy.
Warsama will portray Dr. Nadia Omar, the Harvard-trained Somali medical director of a rural hospital in Jerusalem’s Lot, Dr. Omar’s rational and scientific mind will be put to the test. Abdi will play her older brother, Abdi, who leads the charge to build a Somali community center that will deepen the roots of his people in Maine.