Alessandro Nivola to co-star with Andre Holland in Apple TV’s comedy 'The Big Cigar'

Apple TV+ is coming up with a six-episode limited series called 'The Big Cigar' starring actors Alessandro Nivola and Andre Holland. The series will chronicle the tale of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton's flight to Cuba. As per Deadline, director Don Cheadle, apart from directing, is also serving as the executive producer of the first two episodes, while Janine Sherman Barrois, who won the NAACP Image Award, will serve as showrunner and executive producer. 

Andre Holland will play Newton in 'The Big Cigar', while Tiffany Boone is another member of the show's supporting cast. 

'The Big Cigar' tells a hilarious, extraordinary, and almost-too-good-to-be-true story of how Newton relied on Bert Schneider (Nivola), the Hollywood producer behind 'Easy Rider', to elude a nationwide manhunt and escape to Cuba while being pursued into exile by the FBI.

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The first episode, which is based on the eponymous 'Playboy' article by Joshuah Bearman, has been written and executive produced by Jim Hecht. The show is produced by Warner Bros. Television, which has an overall arrangement with Sherman Barrois and her Folding Chair Productions. 

Through their production business, Epic, a branch of Vox Media Studios, Hecht and Sherman Barrois, along with Bearman, Joshua Davis, and Arthur Spector, are serving as executive producers. 

Following the international success of the comedy show 'Ted Lasso', which earned seven Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series; the upcoming comedy ‘Shrinking’, starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford; and ‘Bad Monkey’, a new drama from Lawrence and star/executive producer Vince Vaughn, 'The Big Cigar' will be Apple TV+ and Warner Bros. Television's latest endeavour. 

The limited series also marks Epic and Apple TV+'s second collaboration together. Along with Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon, Lee Eisenberg, Alan Yang, and Academy Award-winner Sian Heder, she joins the recurring award-winning series 'Little America', as reported by Deadline.

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Alessandro Nivola starred alongside Russell Crowe, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Ariana DeBose in JC Chandor’s Marvel movie 'Kraven The Hunter," which has finished filming. 

The actor also starred in ‘The Boston Strangler,' opposite Keira Knightly, in Jeff Baena's independent comedy ‘Spin Me Round’, starring Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza, and Noah Baumbach's White Noise, featuring his two daughters Sam and May Nivola, are some of the other movies that have been released this year.