The main cast is rounded out by Frank Dillane, who will portray Cora's friend, the ambitious young surgeon Dr.

“There’s a newfound curiosity in both characters.” 'It will sound strange to hear this, but inside the experience I found there were some similarities, in that both Loki and Will are destabilized-their faith is shaken, their certainties are uprooted and questioned,' Hiddleston says. 'When she’s released again into the world as an unshackled person, Cora is a little out of step with herself, and that was a strange experience to play.' 'It was like I was playing an ingenue again, even though I’m decidedly middle-aged,' Danes told Vanity Fair. Hiddleston's most recent television role was as Loki on the Disney+ TV show Loki, and Danes last starred on television in the award-winning Homeland from 2011 to 2020, a performance that earned her two Emmy wins. Told with exquisite grace and intelligence, this novel is above all a celebration of love, and the many different guises it can take.Danes signed on as Cora in February 2021, and Hiddleston joined the cast as William a month later. As he tries to calm his parishioners, he and Cora strike up an intense relationship, and although they agree on nothing, they find themselves inexorably drawn together, eventually changing each other’s lives in ways entirely unexpected.

Like Cora, Will is deeply suspicious of the rumours, but he thinks they are founded on moral panic, a flight from faith. As she sets out on its trail, she collides with William Ransome, Aldwinter’s vicar. Cora, a keen naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, is immediately enthralled, convinced that the magical beast may simply be an undiscovered species. When they arrive in Colchester, rumours reach them from further up the estuary that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming human lives, has returned. Accompanied by her son Francis, she leaves town for Essex, where she hopes fresh air and open space will provide refuge.

When Cora Seaborne’s husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. A sumptuously imagined novel of passion, ideas and friendship.

The essex serpent book