Dennis Quaid has been cast as President George W Bush in Katrina: American Crime Story. The second season of Ryan Murphy's FX anthology series, following the award-scooping success of The People V O.J. Simpson, will focus on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
Bush's role in the drama should be particularly interesting, because Murphy has revealed that the "crime" element of this story will come out of the US government's failures in responding to the natural disaster.
"We're laying into what do you do when you're in a city and your government has abandoned you?" Murphy told THR. "You get out by climbing up and pulling up people with you, and to a large degree that's what the miniseries is about. It's not just what happened but heroic stories about people surviving—or in some cases, dying helping others."
The series cast also includes Annette Bening as Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and Matthew Broderick as now-disgraced FEMA chief Michael D. Brown. Inspired by Douglas Brinkley's book The Great Deluge, the show will focus on several individuals in the wake of Katrina, some of them public figures and some not.
The second and third seasons of American Crime Story are both currently in production, with season three focusing on the murder of Gianni Versace. Both will air in 2018.
