Clémence Poésy & Emily Beecham Board CBS Studios’ ‘King & Conqueror’

Clémence Poésy and Emily Beecham have boarded King & Conqueror, CBS Studios‘ big-budget period drama that stars James Norton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

Harry Potter star Poésy will play Matilda, the wife of William of Normandy. Raised in the cutthroat world of the royal court, she has realized that in order to succeed she has to be more devious, more ruthless and more bloody than her male opponents. Beecham (1899), meanwhile, is Edith Swan-neck, the wife of Harold Godwinson who has never quite found her place in Harold’s family.

The duo join Norton and Coster-Waldau, who are leading as Harold, Earl of Wessex and William, Duke of Normandy respectively.

The show, which has already sold to the BBC in the UK, tells the story of a clash that defined the future of a country – and a continent – for a thousand years, the roots of which stretch back decades and extend out through a pair of interconnected family dynasties, struggling for power across two countries and a sea. Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy were two men destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066; two allies with no design on the British throne, who found themselves forced by circumstance and obsession into a war for possession of its crown.

The series is created and executive produced by Michael Robert Johnson (Sherlock Holmes). Also serving as executive producers are Norton and Kitty Kaletsky for Rabbit Track Pictures, Baltasar Kormákur for RVK Studios, Robert Taylor for The Development Partnership, Dave Clarke and Richard Halliwell for Shepherd Content, Ed Clarke, Robert Jones, Coster-Waldau and CBS Studios’ Lindsey Martin.

Kormákur will direct the premiere episode and, as executive producer, steer the creative across the series. The series will be distributed outside of this market by Paramount Global Content Distribution.