In her continued efforts to completely dominate prestige television, Elisabeth Moss will take on the role of Typhoid Mary, the first healthy woman identified as a carrier of typhoid fever. Variety reports that Moss will star in and executive produce the series, which doesn't have an official title just yet, which will air on the BBC.
The role follows Moss' current turn in The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu's serendipitously timely adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel about a dystopian society where women are nothing more than commodities. According to the AV Club, Typhoid Mary (real name Mary Mallon) was the title given to an Irish immigrant who unknowingly spread typhoid fever among New York's wealthiest families during her time as a cook. After investigators found out that she was responsible for spreading the disease, Mallon was quarantined from the rest of the city.
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"I'm so honored to be working with the incredible team of collaborators we have pulled together with Phil, Robin, BBC America, and Annapurna," Moss said in a statement. "I look forward to telling this story about one of the most infamous women in America, ‘Typhoid Mary,’ a woman whose true tale has never been told. She was an immigrant in turn of the century New York, a time of huge change and progress in America. She was incredibly unique, stubborn, ambitious, and in fierce denial of any wrongdoing until her death where she lived out her days imprisoned on an island just off of the Bronx in New York. She is incredibly complicated, something I seem to enjoy playing."
The show is based on the book Fever, a novel by Mary Beth Keane. So it won't be 100% historically accurate, but it probably will be dark, brooding, and snag Moss plenty of awards.
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