Roland Emmerich’s upcoming sequel to Independence Day will be getting a female president in the shape of Sela Ward.
Ward is best known for big-screen roles in The Fugitive and Gone Girl, and small-screen turns in House and CSI:NY, and will be playing the character of President Lanford.
She will join returning cast members Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman and Vivica A Fox, and new faces including Liam Hemsworth and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Will Smith isn’t returning, but relative newcomer Jessie Usher will be playing his son.
Female US presidents are very rare in major Hollywood films. While women have played small-screen heads of state (Geena Davis in Commander in Chief and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep), their cinematic equivalents have been less high profile.
The most notable example was in 1964’s Kisses for My President, which starred Polly Bergen as a woman who realises that her new job as president is causing her to neglect her family. She ends up pregnant, and resigns so she can become a housewife.
The Independence Day 2 casting news follows word that a gay couple will also feature prominently in the film – another rarity for a big-budget blockbuster. “We have a gay couple in the film,” Roland Emmerich told The Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t make a big deal out of it. You start small and then you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and one day you have a gay character as the lead and nobody will wonder at it no more. But we’re not there yet.”
