Baz Luhrmann Casts His Female Lead for Netflix's 'The Get Down' (Exclusive)

Baz Luhrmann has found his new leading lady. Newcomer Herizen Guardiola will star in the director’s new Netflix original series The Get Down, JustJared.com can exclusively reveal.

The 18-year-old singer/songwriter will make her acting debut as Mylene Cruz, a shining, tenacious girl with a voice from God who dreams of disco stardom from the confines of her family’s fiercely religious church walls.

Baz is directing the first two episodes and the season finale. He will also serve as the executive producer of the 13-episode music-driven drama.

“So many really talented actors were seen to play the lead female role of Mylene Cruz, daughter of Reverend Ramon Cruz and niece of Papa Filipe Fuerte Cruz in The Get Down. It’s always thrilling to find a fresh unknown talent, particularly one who is not only a terrific actor but a magnificent vocalist,” Baz said in an exclusive statement. “The entire The Get Down team welcome Herizen Guardiola into our story.”

Click inside to read the complete synopsis for the new series…

The Get Down will focus on 1970s New York City – broken down and beaten up, violent, cash strapped — dying. Consigned to rubble, a rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers are nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them – except each other, armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, some magic markers and spray cans. From Bronx tenements, to the SoHo art scene; from CBGBs to Studio 54 and even the glass towers of the just-built World Trade Center, The Get Down is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco — told through the lives and music of the South Bronx kids who changed the city, and the world…forever.