Why The Weeping Monk From Cursed Looks So Familiar

As fans of HBO's beloved fantasy series Game of Thrones continue to agonize over the divisive end of the epic series, they also continue to search for a show worthy of filling the void left by its absence. If you're among those fans, you might find just what you're looking for in Netflix's soon-to-release adventure saga Cursed. The new series is set to hit the streaming platform on July 17, 2020. When it does, it will bring with it all manner of sword and sorcery magic.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller (Batman: Year One, 300, Sin City) and Tom Wheeler (The Cape), Cursed boldly reimagines one of the most iconic fantasy tales in history for the feminist age. It does so by putting the fabled Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend at the forefront of the tale, asking what that the legend would've looked like had the magical sword Excalibur chosen the sorceress Nimue to lead England in rebellion instead of King Arthur.

Joining those two iconic characters (played by 13 Reasons Why breakout Katherine Langford and Barry star Devon Terrell, respectively) in the Cursed narrative will be a few others who should prove more than familiar to those with a penchant for Arthurian lore, with the likes of of Merlin (Gustaf Skarsgård), Paladin (Nicki Vickery), Gawain (Matt Stokoe), and more set to join the fray. The faces of the actors portraying those iconic characters will likely seem familiar to viewers, too. We'd wager, however, that the actor playing Cursed's nefarious Weeping Monk will seem more familiar than most. His name is Daniel Sharman, and you've almost certainly seen him on the small screen in recent years. 

Here's why the Weeping Monk from Cursed looks so familiar.  

It's entirely likely, in fact, that you recognize Daniel Sharman's face from another popular Netflix period piece. That's because the up-and-coming actor has appeared in more than a dozen episodes of the streaming giant's compelling 15th Century (and beyond) political drama Medici.

If you haven't caught up with Medici just yet, the third season of the series recently made its way onto Netflix, and brought with it fresh waves of drama and intrigue built to shake up the lives of the historical figures within, even if those figures have dramatically changed over the seasons. As the series opened, it focused on historical figures navigating the choppy waters of Florence, Italy's upper crust circa 1492. It also found the eldest son of the Medici banking dynasty battling for control of his father's empire, and therefore Florence itself, in the wake of the man's death.

Fans of Medici's inaugural season no debut recall screen legend Dustin Hoffman portrayed Papa Giovanni de' Medici in that first run of episodes. They also no doubt recall the oh-so-familiar faces of Brian Cox (HBO's Succession) and Game of Thrones alum Sean Bean (he was Ned Stark) turning up amid Medici's season 1 drama, with Bean's GoT progeny Richard Madden (who played the ill-fated Rob Stark) leading the way as Giovanni's son Cosimo. It was, of course, Daniel Sharman's Lorenzo de' Medici (grandson of Madden's Cosimo) who eventually rose to become the de facto leader of the Florentine Republic when the series' second season (set 20 years after the original) made its way to Netflix in 2018. As such, Sharman was front and center for much of the show's fateful third season as well.

While Daniel Sharman has been making waves in period dramas of late, he's hardly a stranger to more contemporary fare, nor is he a stranger to playing duplicitous characters on the small screen. The actor actually scored his most complex role to date in 2017 when he joined the cast of AMC's The Walking Dead spin-off series Fear The Walking Dead for a memorable arc in the show's third season.

Actually, "memorable" might be a bit of an understatement, as Sharman's run as Troy Otto on Fear The Walking Dead was the very definition of "scene-stealing," if not "season-stealing." Fans of FTWD will no doubt corroborate that statement as season 3 of the show proved a pivotal one, with Sharman's charming psychopath Troy eventually playing the part of the season's central antagonist.

Troy made his auspicious entry into the Fear The Walking Dead universe in the premiere episode of season 3, and it was clear right from the start he wasn't one of the good guys in the zombie apocalypse. In fact, he spent much of that debut episode tormenting the Clark family in genuinely cruel ways before nearly becoming z-meat himself. Once the crew all end up at the Broken Jaw Ranch, things only got more complicated, as Troy's family wasn't entirely on the side of right in the rapidly deteriorating landscape. As for Sharman's Troy, he does seem to form a genuine bond with Madison (Kim Dickens) and Nick Clark (Frank Dillane), but he's never really not a psychopath, and he did kill a lot of people throughout the third season before ensuring the fall of the Broken Jaw compound. As such, his demise was ultimately one of the series' most cathartic moments.

Speaking of contemporary roles in which Daniel Sharman thrived, we can tell you the actor has rarely been better than he was in the modern retelling of the '80s cult-classic Teen Wolf. The movie found Michael J. Fox portraying Scott Howard, a teenaged outsider who, amid all manner of other high school drama, finds out the hard way that he is, in reality, a werewolf. Initially hiding his status as man-wolf, Scott eventually decides to lean into his not-so-monstrous alter-ego, and quickly finds himself the most popular kid in school, with the subsequent hilarity and "know thyself" speechifying quickly following.

MTV Productions rebooted that central premise in 2011, hoping a serialized format would help a new generation of viewers fall for Scott's saga. In the process, they largely eschewed the original film's comedic elements in favor of good, old-fashioned, Twilight-tinged teen melodrama. The result was a series that often felt like a hybrid of Dawson's Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

We mostly mean that in the best way possible, because as problematic as that formula could be in Teen Wolf's six-season run on MTV, the show was still largely (and surprisingly) effective in its narrative approach. For the second, third, and fourth seasons of Teen Wolf, Daniel Sharman was a key player in that narrative, with his tortured lacrosse stud Isaac Lahey eventually succumbing to the fateful "bite" and joining the packs of both Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) and Scott (Tyler Posey) in hopes of keeping the peace in the sleepy town of Beacon Hill. 

Along the way, Sharman's theatrical sharpness helped transform what might otherwise have been a tragically two-dimensional character into one of Teen Wolf's more memorable supporting players.