EXCLUSIVE: Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) has joined Tessa Thompson (Avengers: Endgame), Ruth Negga (Loving) and André Holland (Moonlight) in Rebecca Hall’s (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) directorial debut Passing.

Shoot is underway in New York on the anticipated drama based on a screenplay Hall adapted from the Harlem Renaissance novel of the same name by Nella Larsen. It tells the story of two African-American women, each of whom can “pass” as white but choose to live on opposite sides of the color line in 1928 Harlem.

Nina Yang Bongiovi and Forest Whitaker (Significant Productions), Margot Hand (Picture Films), and Rebecca Hall (Flat Five Productions) are producing, with support from Film4, AUM Creative, XRM Media, Gamechanger Films, TGCK Partners and Sweet Tomato Films. Endeavor Content is handling world sales.

Hall previously said about the project, “Nella Larsen’s Passing is an astonishing book about two women struggling not just with what it meant to be black in America in 1929, but with gender conventions, the performance of femininity, the institution of marriage, the responsibilities of motherhood, and the ways in which all of those forces intersect. I came across the novel at a time when I was trying to reckon creatively with some of my personal family history, and the mystery surrounding my bi-racial grandfather on my American mother’s side. In part, making this film is an exploration of that history, to which I’ve never really had access.”

Skarsgard, who won Emmy and Golden Globe awards in 2017 for his portrayal of Perry on HBO’s Big Little Lies, is currently appearing in Showtime’s On Becoming A God In Central Florida and in A24’s The Kill Team. He recently wrapped Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong.

He is repped by CAA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush & Kaller. Significant Productions is repped by WME and Cohen & Gardner LLP and Flat Five Productions by WME, Julian Belfrage Associates, and attorney Gretchen Rush.