FX’s ‘Legion’ Casts Aubrey Plaza, Dan Stevens & Jean Smart

There may even be a hint about Keller’s character in the latest description of David Haller: “a haunted man, trying to find his way back to sanity, but he’s getting exhausted and is about to give up when he meets the girl of his dreams”. Plaza stars as Lenny, a friend of David who is described as being able to retain an eternally optimistic outlook that life will improve despite her years of abusing drugs and alcohol.

After a run in with a fellow patient, he starts to realize that the voices he hears and what he sees might actually be real, which changes the course of his life. In the comics he is the mutant son of Professor Charles Xavier and Gabrielle Haller.

We’re not likely to see the X-Men join the Avengers anytime soon.

Plaza’s casting comes as a surprise, as she had seemingly moved on to features after seven seasons on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Since he was a teenager, David has struggled with mental illness.

One of the more freakish network strikes of the white-hot iron that is comic book television adaptations has been FX’s gestating series, Legion.

Production on the pilot is set to begin this March, Variety reported.

Deadline said the previously cast Rachel Keller will play a “self-sufficient and street-smart” woman named Syd with a hard exterior but a “soft core”. She is repped by CAA, MGMT Entertainment and Ira Schreck.

Jean Smart most recently starred as “Floyd Gerhardt” in the second installment of the award-winning and acclaimed FX limited series Fargo, for which she won a Critics’ Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie Made for Television or Limited Series.

FX’s X-Men spinoff is going big. They want to combat the growing small-screen influence of DC TV shows at the same time they want to create their own Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least with the Marvel characters whose rights they own for now.