Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson headline The Abandons, a new Western series on Netflix, from writer and creator Kurt Sutter, known for Sons of Anarchy and as a directing contributor on the police thriller series The Shield.
Set to premiere on Dec. 4, The Abandons features Anderson and Headey as the matriarchs of two families living during the Old West in 1854. According to Netflix's official logline, The Abandons follows "the matriarchs of two very different families: the Van Nesses, a dynasty of wealth and privilege led by Anderson’s Constance, and the Abandons, a found family of orphans and outcasts fiercely protected by Headey’s Fiona Nolan. The families find their fates linked by two crimes, an awful secret, star-crossed love, and a piece of land over a silver lode. Their collision in a place just beyond the reach of justice echoes the perpetual American struggle between the haves and have-nots."
Christopher Keyser is the executive producer, who tells Netflix that it's a "classic American story — the frontier, two families both at war and in love with each other, [and] a battle over who owns the land and who makes the rules. In the middle of murder and revenge and a bit of illicit romance, we get to explore questions we never seem to get away from: What makes a family? How do you stay good in a bad world? And would you change who you are and what you believe in to protect what you love? But in this case, we do it all through the eyes of Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson, as two widowed matriarchs battling to survive. And that … is really something to watch.”
Headey's character, Fiona Nolan, is described as the "fierce, faith-driven" matriarch as well as a "nurturer and warrior," while Anderson's character Constance Van Ness is described as a "very different iron-willed matriarch who will stop at nothing to protect and grow the mining fortune she inherited from her husband — and then doubled."