Keira Knightley out of Apple TV drama

Keira Knightley has dropped out of Apple TV+ period drama, The Essex Serpent.

Variety reports production was due to start in six weeks but is now on hiatus due to the pandemic. Knightley’s representative indicated she had to leave for “family reasons” adding that “there wasn’t a comfortable scenario for Keira that could be put in place for an extended period of childcare required for the four-and-a-half-month production.”

Knightley and her husband, musician James Righton, have two children.

Adapted from Sarah Perry’s bestselling novel of the same name, this is being produced by Aussie / UK / US company See-Saw Films (Lion, Top of the Lake, The End, The New Legends of Monkey).

The series follows newly widowed Cora who, having being released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area.