Carrie Preston will play a gay rights
activist in ABC's upcoming miniseries about the gay rights movement.
The eight-hour miniseries, titled When
We Rise, has been in development at ABC for more than two years.
According to Deadline
Hollywood, Preston (The Good Wife, True Blood)
will play Sally Gearheart, described as a “regal and smart radical,
who has had a long career as a gay rights activist.”
Deadline described the upcoming
miniseries as chronicling the “personal and political struggles,
setbacks and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who
helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. civil rights movement
from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to its
successes today.”
The project reunites the team behind
the 2008 film Milk: Director Gus Van Sant, writer Dustin Lance
Black and producer Bruce Cohen. Milk's subject was Harvey
Milk, an LGBT rights activist and politician who was gunned down
inside San Francisco City Hall. Van Sant is set to direct the first
two-hour episode of When We Rise and will co-produce the
series with Black, Cohen and Laurence Mark.