More info on Edie Falco’s new Showtime series
Remember back in February when we told you that Edie Falco was signed for a new dark situation comedy from Showtime about a harried nurse?
Well, they’ve started filming the show in New York and given it a tentative title, Nurse Jackie. What’s more, the cast surrounding Edie includes some familiar faces.
Nurse Jackie will have a boyfriend and he will be played by Paul Schulze. The name may not be familiar, but the face sure is. Paul was Father Phil on The Sopranos, the priest who spent a lot of time with Carmella and had her thinking they were going to replay The Thornebirds.
On this Showtime series, he’s Eddie and he works in the hospital in the pharmacy. That’s important because reportedly Edie’s character has a problem with drugs.
What’s this, she’s a female House? Could she be popping Vicodin as prodigiously as he does? Could anyone?
Other actors in the pilot are West Wing veteran Anna Deavere Smith as a hospital administrator, Mrs. Akalitus, Merritt Wever (NCIS) as Zoey, a young nurse working with Jackie, and Haaz Sleiman (Veronica Mars) a gay Muslim nurse.
The original scoop compared this comedy to Weeds, in particular, the way it’s going to be filmed and the satiric tone. The latest bit also includes more about Jackie’s character, saying that she “has an almost-clairvoyant ability to figure out what’s wrong with her patients even before doctors can — making her a much-sought-after commodity in the ER.”
Caryn Mandabach, an experienced, Emmy-award winning showrunner, is executive producing. Her credits include Grounded for Life, 3rd Rock from the Sun, That ’70s Show and The Cosby Show.
If Showtime likes what they produce, Nurse Jackie — or whatever it’s finally called — could be on the air in Spring 2009, maybe sooner. Considering the quality of the talent, I think we’ll see it sooner rather than later.
Casting Couch: Showtime for Matt Perry, Janet Jackson Gets Real, Sopranos Reunite
Matthew Perry is getting gabby.
After a short-lived season on NBC’s defunct Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the Friends alum is rebounding to cable, coming aboard to executive produce and star in The End of Steve, a dark comedy series for Showtime chronicling the ups and downs of an afternoon talk-show emcee.
Perry cocreated and will cowrite Steve with veteran tube producer Peter Tolan, the mastermind behind HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show and FX’s Rescue Me and screenwriter of Analyze This.
The half-hour pilot centers on the titular character (Perry) as he tries to balance his professional life, in which he’s viewed as a likeable, funny guy on his chatfest, and his personal life as he struggles over a love affair with the station’s morning show host.
Meanwhile, in other casting news:
- Janet Jackson wants her MTV. The diva will front a reality contest in which she mentors a group of wannabe singers and dancers in advance of her world tour, which launches Sept. 10. The goal is to find the next big R&B star.
- That ’70s Show’s Wilmer Valderrama is joining forces with Fox again to headline the comedy pilot The Emancipation of Ernesto, which he will also executive produce. The hourlong series revolves around a Forrest Gump-like innocent on an epic journey to find his father and a long lost love in Los Angeles, with a tone said to be similar to Steve Martin’s The Jerk.
- Sopranos veterans Lorraine Bracco and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are set to reunite in the indie comedy Son of Mourning, playing a mother and love interest, respectively, of a resentful ad copywriter (Joseph Cross), who’s mistaken for a spiritual savior. Heather Graham costars.
Valderrama cast in comedy The Emancipation of Ernesto
“This is the first script I’ve read that made me excited to come back to TV,” said the actor about his latest project. The actor is Wilmer Valderrama; the project is a Fox comedy pilot called The Emancipation of Ernesto.
Wilmer, who is best-known from his eight seasons on That ’70s Show — a supporting player on the Fox mainstay — will be front and center on this new one-hour, single camera comedy. He’s Ernesto, and Ernesto is a quirky character.
The show is citing two 1979 films — for starters — as reminiscent of The Emancipation of Ernesto: Steve Martin’s The Jerk, as well as Chauncey Gardiner, the Peter Seller’s character in Being There. Why? Well, it’s the Ernesto character.
He’s sort of an innocent dolt who is thrust into the world on a quest. He is looking for his father and the love of his life, and searches Los Angeles, unprepared and oblivious to the realities and issues in modern L.A. Somehow, things always work out for Ernesto.
Emily Kapnek has written the script, and according to Susan Levinson, Senior VP for Fox development, “The writing jumped off the page; it has a really unique original tone. It was a mix of real emotion with hard comedy. She has crafted a character we have never seen before.” We may have never seen this before, but it was Levinson who said it reminded her of Being There and even suggested a bit of Forrest Gump in there. Have we left any other innocent dolts out?
Thanks to Valderrama’s success with Fox on That ’70s Show, the one hour pilot has been greenlighted. Ernesto’s backstory has him brought up in a Mexican prison, before landing a job at a Twinkie factory. It’s there that the pilot commences. Like other recent fanciful — and successful — TV comedies, My Name Is Earl and Pushing Daisies, Ernesto will included voiceover narration.
If The Emancipation of Ernesto is as good as described, Fox could be looking for it to appear in earnest, i.e. as a series, in early 2009.
Fez caught playing with Dolls
MTV is hooking up with That ’70s Show’s Fez (Wilmer Valderrama) to develop a scripted comedy that takes a look at celebrity worship. The series, titled Baby Dolls, which will be filmed in documentary style, is told from the point of view of “a naive and jaded personal assistant to a young actress.” Naive and jaded? So this person has a lack of experience, judgment or knowledge about the world but is hardworking and completely worn out by all the energy he or she puts into the job? Sounds like a job for Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock!
Or I guess Valderrama could play the role himself. He certainly played the role of “naive” to a T in That ’70s Show and hasn’t been doing much TV work outside of getting Punk’d by fellow ’70s co-star Ashton Kutcher from time to time. Doesn’t he know that there’s a legion of Fez-natics out here just waiting for him to grace our screens again. Hell, keep it the same character … Fez twenty years later working as a personal assistanta. “Would you like me to powder your breasts with my nose?”