EXCLUSIVE: Gerardo Celasco (Devil in Ohio, Next) and Marta Milans (Shazam!, White Lines) join Peacock’s upcoming South Florida-set crime thriller M.I.A. from Ozark co-creator Bill Dubuque.
They join the series regular cast led by Shannon Gisela, who plays ‘Etta Tiger Jonze,’ Brittany Adebumola, as ‘Lovely,’ and Dylan Jackson as ‘Stanley.’ Maurice Compte, Danay Garcia and Cary Elwes are also series regulars, though their characters’ names, like Celasco and Milans’, have yet to be revealed.
Running drugs is a family affair for Etta Tiger Jonze (Gisela) in M.I.A. But when the family business is threatened, she is thrust into a life she never expected, forcing her to use her wits to survive as she navigates Miami’s criminal underground.
MIA is the airport code for Miami. The SoFla area consists of Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.
The series comes from studio MRC (Poker Face), with Karen Campbell (Outlander, Dexter) serving as executive producer and showrunner. Alethea Jones (High Potential, Mrs. Davis) will direct and executive produce. Dubuque will write Episode 101 and executive produce alongside Campbell and Jones, who will also direct.
M.I.A. is the latest series to explore SoFla’s seedy underbelly including Chris Brancato’s Hotel Cocaine—based on Compte’s father’s life— for MGM+ and two Netflix series: the Sofia Vergara-led Griselda and the early seasons of Narcos focused on Pablo Escobar, both with executive producers including Eric Newman, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard. Narcos was co-created by Brancato. Showtime’s original Dexter series was also famously set in Miami, and its Paramount+ with Showtime prequel spinoff series Dexter: Original Sin.
Celasco is a Salvadoran actor, born in Miami and raised in El Salvador, who has called Los Angeles home since 2005. He made his TV debut with a lead role on the NBC Daytime show Passions, which he followed with various film and TV roles, including Moneyball, Battleship, the FOX series Bones and Person of Interest for CBS.
Celasco was the male lead on the Netflix limited series National Parks for ABC, with guest arcs in Good Sam for CBS and ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder. He also played the male lead of Roku’s Swimming With Sharks opposite Diane Kruger and Kiernan Shipka. He will next be seen in Netflix’s The Waterfront and Carlton Cuse’s Pulse for Peacock. He is repped by Entertainment 360, The Gersh Agency and Goodman Genow Schenkman.
Milans starred in Warner Brother’s “Shazam!” franchise and Netflix’s hit original series White Lines from the Emmy award winner producer Álex Pina. Additionally, she starred in Pina’s Spanish television series The Pier and the Netflix Spain series The Minions of Midas, directed by Academy Award winner Mateo Gil. She is repped by JWM Entertainment Group, The Kohner Agency, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
