American Gods finds its Shadow Moon in actor from The 100

With the television adaptation of American Gods set to debut later this year, Starz has cast its lead character, Shadow Moon.

Ricky Whittle, who currently stars in The CW's popular sci-fi series The 100, has officially joined the show, according to Variety.

American Gods, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's acclaimed novel, follows ex-convict Shadow Moon who's recruited as a type of bodyguard for the elusive Mr. Wednesday. As Shadow Moon travels across the country with Mr. Wednesday, it's revealed that Mr. Wednesday is a god who belongs to an army of ancient mythological gods hellbent on destroying a newer class of deities that have sprung up.

It's clear through the casting of Whittle that Starz is determined to stay as close to the novel as possible. In the book, it isn't revealed until much later that Shadow Moon is black and it's only shown through a brief flashback. It could have been very easy for the network to white wash the series, but instead, it decided to stay as faithful to the source material.

Gaiman also expressed his joy over Whittle being cast and added in a statement to the magazine that American Gods is a book about immigrants and the process of immigrating into a new country. With Whittle being a British actor, Gaiman said, "it seems perfectly appropriate that Shadow will, like so much else, be Coming to America."

It was a sentiment echoed by showrunner Brian Fuller (Hannibal) in the same statement, who added that they searched every continent to find the perfect actor and Whittle was the best of the best.

There's still no word on who may be cast as Mr. Wednesday, but the show is set to start filming in Toronto this April, so expect an announcement relatively soon.