Jericho star Esai Morales is the leading man on the upcoming Caprica pilot, a prequel to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series and hopefully a beginning of another successful sci fi saga. The pilot is scheduled to start filming in the summer.
Morales has been cast as Joseph Adama, a successful and influential lawyer introduced in the Galactica series as father of Admiral William Adama (played by Edward James Olmos) and Apollo‘s grandfather.
The early spoilers and script reviews of the Caprica pilot describe Joseph Adama as a Tauron who emigrated to Caprica and changed his last name from “Adama” to “Adams” to escape prejudice, who has a wife and two children – one whose personality will be used to create an early Cylon model and another who will grow up to lead the survivors of the 12 Colonies to Earth – and is a well-known defense attorney with some shady connections and more than a healthy dose of interest in the darker side of human nature.
In the pilot, Joseph Adama suffers a major personal loss when his wife and daughter are killed in a suicide attack committed by a religious sect with beliefs similar to those we are seeing in Gaius Baltar’s cult in season four of Galactica. Trying to deal with the tragedy, Adama befriends Daniel Graystone, a computer engineer who also lost his daughter in the same explosion, and helps him create the very first Cylon models based on their daughters’ personalities.
There is no word yet on who will play Graystone (but considering how fast the news about the pilot is coming, it’s probably only a matter of days), but the role of his wife Amanda, a successful surgeon who turns to another man for comfort after losing her daughter, has gone to Paula Malcomson.
Malcomson is best known for playing Trixie on the HBO series Deadwood, but has also made notable appearances on ER, John from Cincinnati and Six Feet Under.