Small Screen: Jesse Williams Joins ‘Only Murders In The Building’; Aldis Hodge To Play Alex Cross In New Amazon Series
Ravi Patel
Broadcast: Comedian Cristela Alonzo will co-write, executive produce, and star in a semi-autobiographical single-camera comedy from Scandal’s Dan Bucatinsky for CBS. Titled She Gets It From Me, the series follows two suburban gay dads seeking out a relationship with the Latin birth mother of their adopted teenage daughter. Bucatinksy is rumored to star as well as executive produce with Alonzo, Ryan Seacrest, and Nina Wass via Ryan Seacrest Productions, Jennifer Lopez and Benny Medina via Nuyorican, Andrea Shay, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Brian Dobbins, Peter Principato, and Maggie Haskins for Artists First.
Ravi Patel is joining Joel McHale and Vella Lovell on the Fox workplace comedy Animal Control. The three play a team of local Animal Control officers, with Patel’s character being described as an overwhelmed family man. Created by Bob Fisher, Rob Greenberg, and Dan Sterling, the show is currently slated for a midseason premiere, with MicHale, Fisher, Greenberg, Sterling, and Tad Quill all serving as executive producers.
NBC and Universal Television have extended the options on the cast of the Jesse L. Martin-led drama pilot The Irrationals through the end of December. Based on bestselling author Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational and adapted by Erika Mittman, the show centers on a world-renowned professor of behavioral science (Martin) who helps the authorities solve cases involving governments, law enforcement, and corporations. Last month, NBC commissioned backup scripts for the series but has yet to decide to pick up this last off-cycle pilot of 2022. The show is produced by Martin, Mittman, Mark Goffman, and Samuel Baum, while author Ariely will serve as a consultant.
Aka Niviâna
Cable: The co-creator and executive producer of AMC’s upcoming drama series Parish, Sunu Gonera, has been removed from the project following an investigation into what the network calls “serious allegations” that were brought to their attention. Parish (formerly known as The Driver) is based on the U.K. series by Danny Brocklehurst and Jim Poyser. Gonera co-created the new iteration with Brocklehurst and he directed the pilot. Theo Travers serves as showrunner and Giancarlo Esposito stars as a taxi driver whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to chauffer a New Orleans-based Zimbabwean gangster.
Grantham Coleman (The Americans) has been cast in a key role for the third season of the Starz series Power Book III: Raising Kanan. The prequel series set in the early 1990s stars MeKai Curtis as the young version of Kanan Stark (portrayed by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in the original Power series) and Patina Miller as his mother, Raquel “Raq” Thomas. Coleman joins as the recently released ex-con older brother of Unique, played by Joey BadA$$. Omar Epps, London Brown, Malcolm Mays, Hailey Kilgore, Shanley Caswell, and Antonio Ortiz also star in the Lionsgate Television drama, with Sascha Penn serving as showrunner and executive producer alongside Courtney A. Kemp, Jackson, Mark Canton, Chris Selak, Kevin Fox, Santa Sierra, and Natasha Gray.
The long-awaited fourth season of the HBO anthology series True Detective has added Aka Niviâna and Isabella Star Lablanc to its cast. Along with new cast member Joel D. Montgrand, they join Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, John Hawkes, Christopher Eccleston, Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett and Anna Lambe for the first season not written and run by series creator Nic Pizzolatto. Titled Night Country and set in Alaska, the fourth season will have Issa López as showrunner in addition to directing a few episodes, though Pizzolatto remains an executive producer. Foster and Reis play the detectives this time around, with writer, poet, and climate activist Niviâna making her carting debut as Reis’s sister and Pet Semetary’s LaBlanc portraying Foster’s stepdaughter.
Ronny Chieng - ANGELA WEISS
Streaming: Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams is joining the third season of the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. The series stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as tenants of an NYC building who bond over their shared love of true crime podcasts and end up solving two murders that both occurred within the building. William joins them (and recently announced Season 3-star Paul Rudd) as a documentarian interested in their newest case. Only Martin and John Hoffman co-create Murders in the Building, and both executive produce alongside Short, Gomez, Dan Fogelman, Jess Rosenthal, and Jamie Babbit.
Ronny Chieng has been added to the cast of Hulu’s Interior Chinatown. The Daily Show correspondent joins Jimmy O. Yang in the drama based on the book by Charles Yu about a character (Yang) trapped in the background of a police procedural trying to escape into the larger story. Chieng will play Yang’s best friend, and another recently announced cast member, Chloe Bennet, will play the new lead detective debuting on the procedural police officer show Black & White. Interior Chinatown has been in development at Hulu since 2020, with Yu serving as showrunner and Oscar winner Taika Waititi directing the pilot. Yu and Waititi will also executive produce with Dan Lin, Lindsey Liberatore, Elsie Choi, Jeff Skoll, Miura Kite, and Garrett Basch.
Veteran voice actress Cree Summer has been cast in the Disney+ Marvel series Ironheart. She’ll be joining Dominique Thorne as genius inventor Riri Williams, along with Anthony Ramos, Manny Montana, Shakira Barrera, Alden Ehrenreich, Regan Aliyah, Shea Couleé, Zoe Terakes, and Paul Calderón, all in undisclosed roles. Saha Baron Cohen is also rumored to be appearing later in the six-episode series from Chinaka Hodge, but Marvel has declined to comment.
Chicago Med’s Yaya DeCosta has joined the cast of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer in a recurring role for Season 2. The ten-episode season is based on the fourth book in The Lincoln Lawyer series by author Michael Connelly titled The Fifth Witness. The series follows Los Angeles attorney and former addict Mickey Hall (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) with DeCosta set to play his courtroom rival, prosecutor Andrea Freemann. Produced by A+E Studios for Netflix, The Lincoln Lawyer’s second season will be executive produced by co-showrunners Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez; as well as Connelly, David E. Kelley, Ross Fineman, Barry Jossen, and Tana Jamieson.
Netflix has canceled Bad Crimes, an adult animated series from King of the Hill’s Greg Daniel and Mike Judge that stars Nicole Byer. Created by Nicole Silverberg (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee), the dark comedy procedural featured the voices of Byer and Lauren Lapkus as FBI agents traveling across the country solving grisly crimes. Earlier this year, Netflix canceled several animated projects including the adaptation of the children’s comic series Bone and Ava DuVernay’s Wings of Fire. This latest cancellation comes after Netflix’s head of adult animation Mike Moon stepped down and was replaced by senior vice president of comedy and animation at HBO Max Billy Wee. Bad Crimes was in the middle of production and will now be shopped around to other platforms.
Eva Longoria’s upcoming Apple TV+ series Land of Women has added Amaury Nolasco (Hightown) as a recurring guest and Santiago Cabrera (Star Trek: Picard), Gloria Muñoz (Dangerous Moms), and newcomer Victoria Bazua as series regulars. Currently filming in Spain, Land of Women centers on Gala (Longoria) a New Yorker who flees to Spain with her mother and teenage daughter after her husband disappears and implicates the family in financial improprieties. Nolasco plays a trainee hitman after Gala and her family, Cabrera plays another relative newcomer to the town in Northern Spain, Muñoz plays Gala’s mother’s estranged sister, and Bazua is Gala’s daughter, Kate. Inspired by Sandra Barneda’s best-selling novel of the same name and shot in both English and Spanish, the series is written and created by Ramón Campos and Gema R. Neira, with Logoria executive producing with Campos; Teresa Fernández-Valdés, and Ben Spector.
Apple TV+ has added five actors to the cast of Rashida Jones’ half-hour dark comedic drama, Sunny. Barry’s Joanna Sotomura has been tapped to star in the titular role, with Annie the Clumsy, YOU, Judy Ongg, and Jun Kunimura joining them in the series from Katie Robbins and A24. Sunny is Robbins’ is adaptation of the book Dark Manual by Japan-based award-winning Irish writer Colin O’Sullivan. It follows Suzie (Jones), an American woman living in Kyoto, Japan, whose husband and son disappear in a mysterious plane crash. She’s then given “Sunny” (Sotomura), one of a new class of domestic robots made by her husband’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) electronics company, and the two form a friendship whole uncovering the dark truth of what really happened to Suzie’s family. Singer/songwriter Annie plays Suzie’s friend Mixxy, YOU is Hime, the daughter of Kyoto’s yakuza clan leader, Ongg portrays Susie’s wealthy mother-in-law Noriko Sakamoto, and Kunimura plays another visionary roboticist named Yuki Tanaka. Station Eleven’s Lucy Tcherniak is attached to direct with Robbins, Jones and Tcherniak executive producing alongside Ravi Nandan and Jess Lubben for A24.
Winning Time’s Elijah Rashad Reed has been cast in a recurring role for the fourth season of the DC series Doom Patrol on HBO Max. The show stars Brendan Fraser, Matt Bomer, April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, and Joivan Wade as a team of superheroes who were each given their powers in some horrible accident that left them scarred and disfigured, with Reed joining as a brilliant robotics teacher who is friends with Wade’s character Victor Stone aka Cyborg. Based on characters created for DC by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani, Doom Patrol returns with two new episodes on December 8, with the rest of the season airing once per week through January 5. It’s produced by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television with showrunner Jeremy Carver exec producing alongside Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Chris Dingess, and Tamara Becher-Wilkinson.
Aldis Hodge, who stars as Hawkman/Carter Hall in the recently released DC film Black Adam, has been tapped to portray famous fictional detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross in a new series for Amazon. In development since 2020, the thriller series comes from Paramount Television Studios and Skydance Television, with writer Ben Watkins adapting from the popular James Patterson novels while also serving as showrunner and executive producing. Hodge is the third person to portray Alex Cross on screen, following Morgan Freeman’s film performances in 1997’s Kiss the Girls and 2001’s Along Came a Spider, and Tyler Perry’s 2012 film Alex Cross.
Malik Diop - Linkedin
Industry: Malik Diop has been named chief financial officer of Issa Rae’s production company Hoorae Media. His new responsibilities include setting the financial and risk management operations for all of Rae’s business entities, helping develop and execute Hoorae’s financial and operational strategy, and tracking ongoing development and company financials. Previously Drop has served as a managing director in Morgan Stanley’s financial institutions investment banking practice, a senior credit analyst with American International Group (AIG), and an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities.
The Rookie has hired traci Carter Holsey: Feds star Niecy Nash-Betts to be head of development for her recently signed first-look deal at eOne to produce scripted and unscripted content. Carter Holsey previously worked for BET, Bunim Murray, and Shed Media and Entertainment Studios, and was also a producer on OWN’s reality series Iyanla Fix My Life.
Onyx Collective has ordered a project from 20th Television about two Pakistani-American brothers whose convenience-store magnate father’s death leads them to discover his secret life of crime to pilot. Written by Abdullah Saeed, Deli Boys will star Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh as the brothers Mir and Raj and will be directed and executive produced by Nisha Ganatra.