MEDIA RELEASE: Academy Award Nominee Tim Roth Joins Last King of The Cross

Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Tim Roth (Hateful Eight, Lie To Me, Sundown) will now play the role of the lead antagonist, Ezra Shipman, in the highly anticipated Australian original drama series, Last King of The Cross, after actor Ian McShane has had to withdraw due to health concerns.

Last King of The Cross Producer/Executive Producer Mark Fennessy said: “It’s unfortunate that Ian is unable to join us and we wish him a speedy recovery.  

“We are truly delighted that the super brilliant Tim Roth joins our cast as Ezra and cannot wait to see him breathe life into yet another unforgettable character,” he continued.

Inspired by John Ibrahim’s best-selling autobiography, Last King of The Cross (10×60) is an operatic story of two brothers, Sam and John Ibrahim who organise the street but lose each other in their ascent to power. The elevated serialised drama tracks John Ibrahim’s rise from a poverty-stricken immigrant with no education, no money, and no prospects, to Australia’s most infamous nightclub mogul in Sydney’s Kings Cross – a mini-Atlantic City, barely half a mile long with every form of criminality on offer.

A HELIUM Pictures production for Paramount+ Australia with Cineflix Rights as the exclusive international distribution partner, Last King of The Cross (10×60) is currently filming in and around Sydney,and stars Lincoln Younes (Grand Hotel, Tangle, Barons) playing the lead character of John Ibrahim.

Wily and much-celebrated, Ezra (Tim Roth) has a gift for all things business – be that the stock market or overseeing the illegal gambling, prostitution, and strip joints that Kings Cross has been famous for since the Vietnam War.    For three generations Ezra has been the most powerful and most feared man in Sydney – but now he is confronting his looming mortality. For all his power and material success, and all he has had to do to maintain it, there is no one to continue his legacy.   Enter John Ibrahim (Lincoln Younes) – an adolescent facsimile of Ezra: young, brash, ambitious, and intelligent. Seeing the opportunity to extend his reign, Ezra takes the young John into his inner circle as his acolyte… but who is exploiting who?

The Last King of The Cross cast also includes Callan Mulvey (Scyllias in 300: Rise of an Empire, David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King), Tess Haubrich (Spiderhead, Alien: Covenant),  Claude Jabbour (Eden, Stateless), Maria Tran (Truy Sat, Echo 8), Matt Nable (Riddick, Bikie Wars: Brothers In Arms), Damian Walshe-Howling (Underbelly, Janet King), as well as Wadih Dona, Setareh Naghoni,  Wesley Patten, Jake Ryan, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Simon Elrahi, Robert Rabiah, Justin Rosniak and rising starsAllegra Monk, andMalek Alkoni who plays the character of Teen John.

Mr Roth is represented by CAA, Jackoway Tyerman Wertheimer, and Markham, Froggatt & Irwin.