Age: 44
male
Rupert William Anthony Friend (born October 1981) is an English actor. He first gained recognition for his roles in The Libertine (2004) and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (2005), winning him awards for best newcomer. He portrayed George Wickham in Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lieutenant Kurt Kotler in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), Albert, Prince Consort in The Young Victoria (2009), psychologist Oliver Baumer in Starred Up (2013), CIA operative Peter Quinn in the political thriller series Homeland (2012–2017), Vasily Stalin in The Death of Stalin (2017), Theo van Gogh in At Eternity's Gate (2018), and Ernest Donovan in the series Strange Angel (2018–2019). In the early 2020s, Friend began collaborating with director Wes Anderson, starting with a cameo in The French Dispatch (2021), followed by roles in Asteroid City (2023) and the Netflix short films The Swan and The Rat Catcher. In 2022, he starred as disgraced British politician James Whitehouse in Anatomy of a Scandal and featured in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi as the Grand Inquisitor. Friend is the director, screenwriter or producer of two award-winning short films: The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2008) and Steve (2010). He wrote lyrics for the Kairos 4Tet 2013 album Everything We Hold. Description above from the Wikipedia article Rupert Friend, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
In the years 2121 AD, several decades after humanity ("Terrans") has expanded its presence beyond Earth, terraforming and colonizing Venus and Mars. These three planets are "the Homeworlds", the core first of the Terran interplanetary state and later of Neosapien Commonwealth. Not all Terrans are affiliated with the Homeworlds, however: the Pirate Clans, descendants of Terran criminals exiled to the Outer Planets who live off looted Homeworlds' space freighters, are a major independent faction. The Earth Congress dispatches the entire Exofleet, humanity's space-based military, to counter the Pirate threat. With a war with the Pirate Clans looming, an uprising begins among the Neosapiens, an artificial humanoid race coexisting with Terrans. The Neosapiens were used primarily as slaves during the colonization of Mars and Venus and therefore have been engineered to be physically stronger and better adapted to hostile environments than humans. Their mistreatment by Terrans led to the First Neosapien Revolt fifty years earlier, which was mercilessly crushed but had brought some positive changes into their lives. Still not content with his fate, the Neosapien Governor of Mars, Phaeton, sets a new insurrection, codenamed "Operation [Neosapien] Destiny", in motion as soon as the Exofleet leaves to chase after the Pirate Clans. The absence of the Exofleet is also a part of Phaeton's plan as it enables the Neosapiens' capture of the Homeworlds without much effort.
