Game of Thrones alum Rose Leslie and the Divergent franchise’s Theo James have been tapped as the leads in The Time Traveler’s Wife, a HBO drama series based written by Steven Moffat.
Moffat, who worked as a head writer on Doctor Who and co-created Sherlock, adapted the series from Aubrey Niffenegger’s best-selling novel. HBO landed the project back in 2018 after a multiple-outlet bidding war that reportedly included Amazon.
“I read Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife many years ago, and I fell in love with it,” Moffat explained at the time of the order. “In fact, I wrote a Doctor Who episode called ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ as a direct response to it… The brave new world of long form television is now ready for this kind of depth and complexity. It’s a story of happy ever after – but not necessarily in that order.”
From the information so far released by HBO, this series sounds very different from The Time Traveler’s Wife’s big screen adaptation in 2009, which starred Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.
Leslie’s character Clare is described as “fiery, clever, and unstoppable – and for most of her life she’s had an amazing secret. Since she was 6, she has had an imaginary friend… who appears in the woods behind her house and tells her tales of the future… [As the years pass] she starts to realise her friend is not imaginary – he’s a time traveller, visiting from the future.” One day Clare would meet a young man named Henry, who she’ll know well but who won’t have yet met her, and she would become the time traveller’s wife.
Henry DeTamble is played by James. He “has been a time traveller since he was 8. It’s not a superpower, it’s a condition – he can’t help it… His life is a roller coaster of constant danger and white-knuckle survival. Until one day he meets a beautiful redhead in the library where he works. Her name is Clare Abshire and though he’s never seen her before, she claims to have known him all her life.”
With Moffat serving as both writer and executive producer of the series, The Time Traveler’s Wife will follow the relationship between Clare and Henry as they grow to know each other and learn to handle Henry’s ability.
