Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Kit Harington, and more all join Apple's Extrapolations

Meryl Streep, Kit Harington, Gemma Chan, and David Schwimmer are just a few of the names announced for the cast of Scott Z. Burns’ anthology series, Extrapolations. As the title suggests, the series will hypothesize what our lives could look like as climate change continues to alter our environment and way of life.

The full lead cast for the Apple TV+ series is rounded out by Sienna Miller (G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra), Tahar Rahim, Matthew Rhys (Perry Mason), Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs, and Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger).

The details concerning Streep’s role remain undisclosed for some reason, but it’s known Miller will play a marine biologist named Rebecca Shearer. Harington takes on the role of Nick Bilton, CEO of an industrial giant—and presumably, a guy who won’t look so good in the series about climate change.

Rahim is a French actor mostly known for his leading role in A Prophet, and will play a man struggling with memory loss named Ezra Haddad. Rhys’ role is a real estate developer named Junior.

Singer, actor, and rapper Diggs is set to play Marshall Zucker, a rabbi in South Florida. Known for her role in the upcoming Eternals, Chan will play Natasha Alper, a single mother and micro-finance banker. She recently worked with Streep on the HBO Max series Let Them All Talk.

Schwimmer will play Harris Goldblatt, who has the very bland yet straightforward description: “A man with a teenage daughter.” In a real stroke of creative genius, Gourav will play a driver for hire named Gaurav.

Burns most recent work was another Streep-led project for Netflix, titled The Laundromat. As a screenwriter and director he’s helmed features such as the timely Contagion, The Report, Side Effects, and The Bourne Ultimatum. Upon the series order at Apple TV+, Burns said he hopes to dive into the ways climate change will affect us on an interpersonal level.

“Most of the storytelling around climate change has focused on the science and getting people to accept it,” Burns said in a statement to Variety. “Our aim with Extrapolations is to move beyond science and use drama, comedy, mystery and every other genre to allow us to consider how every aspect of our world is going to be changing in the years ahead.

We can all speculate on precisely what is coming in terms of temperature increase or sea level rise or climate-driven human migration… but what we know for sure is that—no matter what—we are all going to be there, together, with our foibles, our dreams, our appetites and our other issues. The climate is going to change, are we?