One of the biggest stars of the past several years, Jeremy Allen White, will soon head to Netflix for a series adaptation of André Aciman’s novel Enigma Variations. Previously, Aciman’s romance novel Call Me by Your Name got a silver screen adaptation with Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer leading the cast. The new project finds White in a starring role and is executive producing the new series.
The Wheel of Time and The Blacklist writer Amanda Kate Shuman adapts Aciman’s story as the project’s writer, executive producer, and showrunner, with Oliver Hermanus directing and executive producing alongside White.
You can read the official description for Enigma Variations below, courtesy of Variety:
“‘Enigma Variations’ charts the life of a man named Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence. Whether the setting is southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or a snowbound campus in New England, where his enduring passion for a girl he’ll meet again and again over the years is punctuated by anonymous encounters with men—whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park or on a New York sidewalk in early spring. Paul’s attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire. Ahead of every step Paul takes, his hopes, denials, fears, and regrets are always ready to lay their traps. Yet the dream of love lingers. We may not always know what we want. We may remain enigmas to ourselves and to others. But sooner or later, we discover who we’ve always known we were.”
After making a splash in the down-and-dirty drama Shameless, Jeremy Allen White shattered expectations with his role as Philip “Lip” Gallagher on FX’s The Bear. Season 4 of The Bear develops while White continues his work on the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere and the upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian & Grogu.
Aciman’s Enigma Variations presents a complex story about bisexuality and the possibilities that being open to different aspects of love can yield. Aciman’s stories are intimate and engaging and leave an impression long after they end. We look forward to seeing what Jeremy Allen White brings with Enigma Variations.
