Philly Actor Evan Jonigkeit Cast in Netflix Series Frontier


Evan Jonigkeit in Mauckingbird Theatre Company's 2009 production "Never the Sinner" | Photo by John Flak

Evan Jonigkeit in Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s “Never the Sinner” (2009) | Photo by John Flak

An actor who cut his teeth on Philly stages, Evan Jonigkeit, has been cast in a new action series from Netflix called Frontier. The show is set in Canada in the late 18th century and concerns a group of cutthroat characters who are fighting to control the North American fur trade.

“Told from multiple perspectives,” explains Deadline. “the series takes place in a world where business negotiations might be resolved with close-quarter hatchet fights and where delicate relations between native tribes and Europeans can spark bloody conflicts.”

Yikes.

Jonigkeit will play Captain Chesterfield, a righthand man to the show’s protagonist, Alun Armstrong (played by Lord Benton), and the enemy of bad guy Declan Harp (Jason Momoa.) Deadline describes Chesterfield as “a vicious man who lives by a code. He has come from “humble beginnings to become politically motivated in this new and unpredictable world.”

Evan Jonigkeit and girlfriend, "Girls" star Zosia Mamet | Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

Jonigkeit and girlfriend, “Girls” star Zosia Mamet | Photo by Helga Esteb via Shutterstock.com

Jonigkeit is a graduate of Neshaminy High School. Before heading out to try his hand in the movies, he was a regular in productions by Philly’s Mauckingbird Theatre Company, like 2009’s Never the Sinner. Philadelphia Weekly named him Philly’s Sexiest Actor in 2010.

He got his big break in 2012 after being cast as Toad in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Since then, he’s appeared on television in Girls (alongside real-life sweetheart Zosia Mamet) and The Good Wife. He has also snagged roles in upcoming feature films TallulahFun House and Brave New Jersey, which takes place in a small Jersey town on the night of Orson Welles’s groundbreaking War of the Worlds broadcast. Frontier is expected to be out sometime in 2016.

Check out our interview with Jonigkeit from last May here.

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