A Casting Coincidence

I don’t tend to spend a lot of time — at all — thinking about what real-life actors might play the roles in the inevitable movies which will be made from my books. First of all, I don’t want to get locked down in my head to a single look or voice, and second, well…that’s the writer’s equivalent of the kid with the bat stepping up to home plate on an empty neighborhood field and saying to himself, “It’s the bottom of the ninth. Game seven of the World Series. Timmy steps up….”


But like all rules, I don’t follow this one specifically, and there are two roles in the Forgotten Stars books that I have mentally filled with specific actors. One is the stern, business-like, and highly competent Lieutenant Penda Rasharri, who serves as an unplanned mentor to Princess Tariana Osono, giving the Princess her first lessons in what it is to be a Stardancer. I’m not sure why, but the actor I’ve always had in my mind as playing Rasharri is Taraji P. Henson.