HBO's His Dark Materials has found a new actor to voice Stelmaria after the passing of voice actor Helen McCrory.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Lord Asriel's snow leopard daemon will now be played by Victoria Hamilton, who appeared in Sky's TV series Cobra, and Netflix's The Crown, where she played Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The His Dark Materials role will see her replace McCrory, who, after voicing the role for the show's first two seasons, tragically succumbed to a long, private battle with cancer back on April 16, 2021.
Season 3 of His Dark Materials began production in June 2022, as confirmed by a BTS photo from HBO of the show's stars Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson holding a slate. The season is set to be based on the third novel in Philip Pullman's Dark Material series, The Amber Spyglass. According to the season's official synopsis, the new episodes "will see Will, the bearer of The Subtle Knife, and Lyra, the prophesied child, travel through multiple worlds to find and protect each other."
His Dark Materials' Season 3 Newcomers
Hamilton isn't the only new cast member joining the show for Season 3. Recent additions include Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Tyrant's Jamie Ward, Dark Heart's Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Everest's Simon Harrison and Into the Badlands' Chipo Chung. Returning to the cast is star Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua, Ruth Wilson as Marisa Coulter, James McAvoy as Lord Asriel, Amir Wilson as Will Parry, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby, Will Keen as Father MacPhail and Anne-Marie Duff as Ma Costa.
His Dark Materials was renewed for a third season in late 2020. On the decision, HBO Programming Executive Vice President Francesca Orsi said that "Bringing Phillip Pullman's epic, intricate and culturally resonant body of work to television has been a tremendous privilege," adding "We look forward to completing the trilogy with this final chapter in Lyra's journey."
This isn't the first time Roth's series has been adapted for the screen. In 2007, the first book in the Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass, was made into a movie directed by Chris Weitz. The star-studded film was met with a largely negative response from fans who believed that it strayed too far from the book, and made too much of an effort to sanitize the violent and controversial elements of its source material.
The first two seasons of His Dark Materials are available to stream on HBO. There is no release date for Season 3 just yet.
Source: Entertainment Weekly