Hugo Weaving joins SBS drama The Airport Chaplain as production takes off

Hugo Weaving and Shabana Azeez

Australian broadcaster SBS and producer Wooden Horse have revealed the cast of upcoming eight-part drama The Airport Chaplain will be led by Hugo Weaving (Slow Horses, Love Me) and Shabana Azeez (The Pitt, Apple Cider Vinegar).

The project, which was unveiled at the SBS upfronts event last year, has gone into production in Melbourne, Victoria. It is said to offer a unique view of humanity in transit through the eyes of an airport chaplain and is slated to premiere on SBS and SBS On Demand later this year.

Wooden Horse exec producer Jude Troy co-created the series with writer and exec producer Elise McCredie (The Clearing, Stateless, Jack Irish) and the series is directed by Bonnie Moir (Run) and Tig Terera (Swift Street).

Troy said the project was inspired by her own encounter with an airport chaplain at Melbourne International Airport. “Set in a high-stakes ecosystem of controlled chaos and transient people, the show speaks to humanity and connection, something the world needs right now,” he said.

Weaving plays the chaplain and Azeez his new and difficult boss. Also featuring are Claudia Karvan (Bump, Halifax: Retribution), Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High, The Narrow Road to the Deep North) and Erroll Shand (All Her Fault, The Twelve).

The production, which has secured funding from agencies Screen Australia and Vic Screen in association with SBS, is generating 170 jobs for local Victorian screen professionals and injecting over A$8m (US$5.5m) into the economy.

Nakul Legha, SBS’s head of scripted, spoke about the project at C21’s Content London in December.

He claimed the series has a “scale and ambition that we’ve never done before, and that’s requiring us to be incredibly pragmatic about how we achieve it, because we know that to maintain reach and relevance as a smaller broadcaster with less resources we have to take those big swings. That’s the only way.”