DAYS' Kate Mansi lands role in politically-charged drama series

Get ready for the explosive new series Casa Grande, a politically charged drama starring Kate Mansi (ex-Abigail Deveraux, Days of our Lives) in a role that she says is "a real joy" -- though from the looks of things, not literally.

Days of our Lives' Abigail Deveraux gave plenty of death glares while she was being played by Kate Mansi, but she might not have anything on the Emmy-winning actress' latest character, Casa Grande's Hunter Clarkman.

Mansi took to Instagram with an image of herself getting into character for her new project, which she captioned, "Hunter. Coming soon." The actress ironically added "she's a real joy" -- though, judging by the very serious look of things, "killjoy" would have worked, too.

So, who exactly is Hunter? And what is Casa Grande? Mansi was unable to share any details publicly, but all it took was a quick Internet search to find that the series is a five-episode drama co-created by Iranian-American filmmaker Ali Afshar and Lauren Swickard, the latter of whom is the real-life wife of Josh Swickard, who plays General Hospital's Harrison Chase. (As soap fans may recall, the Swickard couple starred together in Lauren's recent Netflix hit, A California Christmas.)

An EFX Entertainment clip reveals that Casa Grande navigates universal themes of class, immigration, and culture as it follows a white family that owns a ranch in Northern California and the Latinx workers who live there.

"It's all love and life and challenges and the immigration issues that they're facing, and that's also all the issues that the Americans are facing, as well," says Ashfar. "I think it's going to be really interesting, and I think it's really timely for this moment."

Adds Swickard, "The grand theme is that of pulling back the veil of the machine we all live in if we did not have the Hispanic workforce in America working fourteen hours a day."

Director Gabriela Tagliavini chatted about the series with Variety, revealing, "There's a war about race in our country taking place right now, and we decided to take the bull by the horns. We show in provocative scenes how hate and violence are originated by fear."

In addition to Mansi, the ensemble cast includes Afshar, Christina Moore, John Pyper-Ferguson, Madison Lawlor, Daniel Edward Mora, Karen Bethzabe, Javier Bolanos, and Raquel Dominguez.

A release date for Casa Grande has not yet been announced, so check back to Soap Central for updates as they come.

Kate Mansi began her DAYS run in 2011 and played the role until 2016, when she decided to take her career in a different direction. The NBC soap opera chose Marci Miller as a recast for Jack (Matthew Ashford) and Jennifer's (Melissa Reeves) daughter, but when Miller unexpectedly vacated the role in 2018, Mansi returned for a brief stint to wrap up the character's storyline.

In 2019, Mansi returned to the role once again, this time for a limited series on the DOOL App that showed Abby and Chad's (Billy Flynn) life in Paris. When the online series ended, Chad and Abby returned to Salem, and Mansi played the character until May of 2020, when she once again decided to leave. In an amusing revolving door situation, DAYS decided to yet again recast the role with Marci Miller, who resumed the role of Abigail in mid-2020.

What do you think about Kate Mansi taking part in the politically charged series Casa Grande? Are you intrigued by the premise of the five-part drama that focuses on race relations in America? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.