Thursday, June 27, 2013

TV News - 'Open,' 'Emmy Nominations,' 'Drop Dead Diva,' 'Unforgettable,' 'The Honourable Woman,' 'Middle Age Rage,' 'Lost Angels,' 'Major Crimes' & 'Anger Management'

        Thursday, June 27 - Scott Speedman (Felicity, Last Resort) has landed a leading role on the HBO drama pilot Open from Ryan Murphy and Lauren Gussis. He will play Jonathan, a handsome sports marking executive. He joins Wes Bentley on the project which is just getting started with its casting.


Two time Emmy winner for Breaking Bad Aaron Paul and House of Cards star Kate Mara will join Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Chairman-CEO, Bruce Rosenblum, at 5:40 AM PDT on July 18th to announce the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards Nominations. The announcements will take place at the Television Academy's Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood.

All My Children vet Michael E. Knight will appear on the July 14 episode of Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva. He will play Charles Van Horn, a lawsuit-happy curmudgeon who is now representing himself in a case involving his dog's unplanned pregnancy.

Sendhil Ramamurthy (Beauty and the Beast, Heroes) has been cast on an upcoming episode of CBS' Unforgettable. He will play Philip, a hardened career criminal who serves as the leader of an elite team of thieves assembled by a mysterious man named "Kilborn."

Sundance has picked up The Honourable Woman, an eight part miniseries starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, and will co-produce the project with BBC Worldwide, North America. Written and directed by Hugo Blick (The Shadow Line), Honourable Woman is described as a fast-paced, labyrinthine thriller set against an international political backdrop that carries Blick's distinctive rhythmic style and vision. It centers on Nessa Stein (Gyllenhaal), whose father was a Zionist arms procurer, and as children, she and her brother witnessed his assassination. As an adult, inheriting her father's company, she dramatically inverts its purpose from supplying arms to laying high-spec data cabling networks between Israel and the West Bank. Her sudden appointment to the House of Lords, apparently due to her tireless promotion of projects for reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians, creates an international political maelstrom.

ABC has extended the contract options on the cast of its single-camera comedy pilot Middle Age Rage until September. Created by Cheryl Holliday, the pilot starred Annie Mumolo as a middle-aged wife and mother who is fed up with feeling invisible and begins to speak up and demand the respect she feels she's earned. The rest of cast includes Will Sasso, Melanie Leishman, Wyatt Oleff, Kellee Stewart and Skyler Gisondo.

Iddo Goldberg (Secret Diary of a Call Girl) has landed a major recurring role on TNT's upcoming new drama series Lost Angels. He will play Leslie Shermer, a mysterious man with a psychotic gleam in his eye who is the eyewitness to a past murder.

Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond), Marion Ross (Happy Days), Tim Conway (The Carol Burnett Show), Ron Glass (Barney Miller) and Paul Dooley (Curb Your Enthusiasm) will appear in an August episode of TNT's Major Crimes. The quintet of TV vets will play a group of outspoken residents at an apartment complex, who all once worked together on a 1970s crime drama called Prognosis: Homicide!. In the episode, the tenants help Major Crimes solve a case involving the death of a rather unpopular neighbor. ER vet Paul McCrane will also appear in the hour as an agent from the ICE Inspector General's office.

Brian Austin Green (Wedding Band, Happy Endings) is being brought back to FX's Anger Management as a new series regular and a new foil to Charlie Sheen's character. His character, Sean, first appeared in the series' first episode as the new boyfriend of Charlie's ex-wife Jen (Shawnee Smith). He later appeared in two more episodes.