Keira Knightley leaves Apple TV+'s The Essex Serpent over COVID childcare concerns

Just a few weeks after Liv Tyler announced that she would not be returning to Fox’s 9-1-1: Lone Star over concerns about having to travel from her home in London to where the show is filmed in Los Angeles, we have another famous person announcing that the ongoing nature of the pandemic has forced them to give up a job: According to The Wrap, Keira Knightley has decided to leave Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent, which she was going to star in and executive produce. Rather than travel concerns, though, Knightley’s issue is the rising number of cases in the United Kingdom and the looming threat of new lockdowns being imposed. Knightley has two young children and apparently couldn’t find a “comfortable scenario” that would allow her to put in the necessary work on this show and take care of her children for the duration of the months-long production.

The Wrap says Apple has now delayed production on The Essex Serpent, but there’s been no official statement on this. Assuming it still happens, the show will be based on the book of the same name by Sarah Perry, and it would’ve starred Knightley as a woman named Cora who, intrigued by rumors of a mysterious beast, moves out of Victorian London to a small village after her abusive husband dies. Now someone else will get the honor of investigating the mystery of an old-timey English snake monster.