So we did report in our recent news story that we believe they are likely to be playing Frank and Helen, and we have some reasonably good intel to suggest that is the case, however it's not been confirmed.... Id say it's a high confidence assessment though.

(Note that WhatsOnNetflix did recently independently corroborate KHS as Frank using their own sources - so I would say our leads on this feel  pretty tight overall)

All that being said, I'm pretty excited by this potential pairing. KHS was great in both Paddington 2 and Wonka, and I enjoyed Wokoma's performance in Enola Holmes.

One of the things we've discussed previously on the discord chat is the potential to lean into the 1950s social context, by having Frank and Helen be part of the 'Windrush Generation' - the large emigration of people from British territories in the Caribbean over to London to assist with reconstruction after the war and to make a new life for themselves. It feels like something you could tie into the themes of Narnia quite well.

It seems almost certain that they will be playing at Frank and Helen. This casting is too predictable. Of course this is the angle. As Icarus noted, in some ways it seems to fit well. Frank and Helen were humble, poor folk, from late Victorian London, and so why not cast humble, poor, recent immigrants from post-war London as Frank and Helen in this MN reworking? Although, I do think one could have found poor, humble, English people in 1950s London. But making them immigrants adds another dimension, and making them non-English makes it more current and presently pertinent (supposedly), and so that seems better (perhaps).

About a year ago, I believe, there were rumors about the casting of Digory, that he might be played by a South Asian actor. I'm glad that didn't come to pass. My reasons for opposing this Frank and Helen transformation are the same as I expressed then about Digory in the thread "Digory's Ethnic Background." Which reasons are themselves similar to why I oppose the time period change and any potential shift in the Aslan's maleness.

If there is going to be an adaptation, I want it to be an adaptation of the book C.S. Lewis wrote. The details matter. Specific things have specific flavors and aspects. What is salt water, and what is fresh? What is a birch leaf, what an oak? What do they mean? I don't know, but I have faith they matter. You can't start poking and prodding and pulling. You may untie the whole thing. Let the respective peoples keep their own stories theirs. A people's stories are how it knows itself, and how it derives its worth. Stories are a people's link to the forms, for in stories people see themselves in a higher and eternal way and place. When you make significant alterations, you bring in new themes, new questions. You don't know how an author would have addressed these themes in the context of the book at hand, because he did not. You may therefore use an author's work as a vehicle, a hijacked vehicle, to say something he would not agree with, or which he would have said differently, or which he would have said in a different time and place and way, if at all. It is art, and art is a subtle whole. You don't need to adjust art to keep it relevant, because good art is already eternal. By trying to adjust it to be relevant, you lose its eternality, which is found, in part, in its specifics, its details, its time.

I had a feeling that they might be Frank and Helen 🙂. I don't think the race-swap should affect anything about the story going forward.

Posted by: @icarus

So we did report in our recent news story that we believe they are likely to be playing Frank and Helen

I had seen the suggestion of Kodna Holdbrook-Smith playing Frank, but I missed Susan Wokoma for Helen. Cool. 

Just to weigh in on the whole race-swapping thing...

Last year, I attended a performance of a stage version of The Railway Children. It was held in a part of Yorkshire that has a significant population of Indian origin, and in this version of the story, they made it that the children's mother was Indian (and their father was British), so the roles of the mother and the three children were played by actors of that ethnic background. The story was otherwise set in Edwardian England, as the original book is.

The race-swapping did not have the slightest negative effect on the plot of the play, on my enjoyment of it, or on my feelings that this was a wonderful and beautifully done adaptation of a classic story that has been very close to my heart since childhood.

Probably the main reason for that totally positive impression was that they kept it simple and didn't make a big deal of the race-swap. Just a couple of lines added to the script to mention that the mother came from India, which, in the context of the era, wasn't implausible. (I can't quite recall, but as the father in the story works for the British government, I think it was briefly mentioned that he had a posting in [then British-ruled] India for a time and that was where he met their mother.)

If the producers of the play had made a big deal of it — going down the route of racial commentary and related themes that are no part of the original story and wouldn't add anything to it, but would more likely be a huge distraction from it — I don't think I would have enjoyed it at all. I reckon I would have found that very tedious and would have thought "Ho hum, here we go again with currently popular political issues being shoehorned into a story that has nothing to do with any of that stuff, instead of letting us simply enjoy a classic for what it is..."

But as I said, the way it was done in this case, it was simple, unobtrusive, allowed four local actors of Indian background (three of them young) to take starring roles without them looking "wrong" for their parts and us having to pretend they weren't...

... and it was just an absolutely beautiful production that left me feeling totally uplifted and so glad I went to see it.

So if this new movie of The Magician's Nephew has Frank and Helen as Londoners of African or Afro-Caribbean background (much more credible for a story set in 1955 than for one set in 1900) — yes, it might be done in a tedious and heavy-handed way that detracts from the story. Or it might be done in a really straightforward and elegant way that doesn't harm the story at all.

I certainly wouldn't object to it on the grounds that having Frank and Helen be anything other than white (when their ethnicity isn't crucial to the story anyway) would somehow be a desecration.

There are other aspects of this production — some confirmed, some only rumoured but still ominous — that I find a LOT more concerning than that. 

Honestly, I have no one to blame for but myself in this disappointment. It's not that I am disappointed because of who they cast, or I wanted their ethnicity to stay the same, but, rather that I spent a great deal of time imagining it differently when it was mentioned that Susan Wokoma would play Queen Helen. Because they did not announce Frank's actor, I thought to myself that it would make most sense to cast a biracial couple if they wanted to start a new world  with the most variety and even though Narnia has possible other explainations for the variety. (Naiads, Dryads, Nymphs, marrying Dwarfs, and possibly coming from our World like the Telemarines.)

I thought about the new Percy Jackson adaptation and Harry Potter, and I thought I bet they are going to do this with Narnia too. So, I went little crazy and started thinking up Rock and Roll style song lyrics that mentioned the fact that they were a biracial couple. Essentially, I started writing fan fiction inspired by the fact that they were a biracial couple, Helen was part of the Windrush Generation and met Frank who was a cabby driver who had been through the war as a soldier in WW2. Helen was working as a maid/nurse at the Ketterly house, so, Digory knew her before Narnia. She was like a second mother to him. Yes, all of this was in the song lyrics.

Anyway, so, I am most likely wrong, but, since I spent weeks doing this, and then I find out that's not what is happening I was quite disappointed at first. But, I understand this is a me problem and will have no effect on the finished project. They probably will be a sweet couple and I will enjoy them as Frank and Helen, but, in the meantime, I wish they would give us a list of cast members with their names of who they are playing. I want to have fun while waiting to the film but, not be so disappointed when it doesn't happen. 

Kobna is almost fifty years old, and Frank and Helen are supposed to be a young couple, so I highly doubt that he is playing Frank. Also, both he and Susan have done voice acting, so I would think it likely that that is what they are doing in this movie.

@lions-mane-minotaur 

In real life, Susan is 38 and Kobna is 48. This wouldn't be unrealistic for playing a married couple. 

Posted by: @lions-mane-minotaur

Kobna is almost fifty years old, and Frank and Helen are supposed to be a young couple, so I highly doubt that he is playing Frank. Also, both he and Susan have done voice acting, so I would think it likely that that is what they are doing in this movie.

Oddly enough, of the two castings, KHS as Frank is the one that is pretty much confirmed.

Not only did several of NarniaWeb's source indicate it to be the case (per our recent reporting), but What's On Netflix also reported it via their own sources as well.

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/kobna-holdbrook-smith-joins-the-cast-of-greta-gerwigs-the-chronicles-of-narnia-netflix-movie/

You might note that they credit the role as "Francis" rather than "Frank", and whilst I'm not sure where they got this detail from (Frank is often a short-form for Francis, so its a moot point either way) it proves to me at least that they didn't just follow our lead, but rather that they have corroborating sources of their own. So I'd rate it as like a 90% confidence overall.