Hey All,
Here are the news items for today:
TELEVISION
Actor Kenny Johnson (The Shield and Saving Grace) will have a recurring role in season five of Covert Affairs, playing a former CIA paramilitary operative, who is compassionate and has an excellent track record and strong moral center. He is the type of guy who tackles any challenges thrown his way. Johnson’s arc begins in the second half of the season, which returns this fall. Covert Affairs will air its mid-season finale on August 26 on the USA Network. (Philiana Ng at The Hollywood Reporter)
AMC has given a second season renewal to Halt And Catch Fire. (Dominic Patten at Deadline)
Actress Louise Lombard (CSI) will guest star in at least three episodes of Grimm, playing Elizabeth Lascelles, a mysterious woman connected to the royal families. Grimm will be back starting on October 24 on NBC. (Hanh Nguyen at TV Guide)
Actress Stephanie Jacobsen (Melrose Place and Battlestar Galactica) is joining the cast of NCIS as FBI Agent Leia Pendergast, a former U.S. Marshal turned FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force leader who will be a love interest for Tony (series regular Michael Weatherley). NCIS will be back for its 12th season on September 23 on CBS. (Liz Raftery at TV Guide)
They may have both lost their regular TV gig on the newly cancelled ABC Family series Twisted, but that doesn’t mean that actor Avan Jogia and actress Kylie Bunbury won’t be working together again. It looks like Bunbury will join Jogia in the Spike TV six-hour event series Tut that will chronicle the youngest Pharaoh ever to rule Ancient Egypt with Jogia in the lad role and Bunbury playing a character named Suhad. (Andy Swift at TV Line)
Showtime has given both Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex third season 12-episode renewals. (Laura Prudom at Variety)
DirecTV is bringing Full Circle back for a second season; but this time around Neil LaBute, who wrote the first season, will be replaced by writer Keith Huff (House of Cards and Mad Men). This new season will be set in an Irish bar, focusing on 11 characters whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a man must face his father-in-law in a High Noon scenario, to pay for his actions that put his father-in-law in prison 28 years earlier. Casting is currently underway. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)
DEVELOPMENT NEWS
Actress Roma Downey and her husband/producing partner Mark Burnett are developing a potential series for NBC tentatively titled Unveiled that will around a group of guardian angels who must intervene to help people in a state of crisis. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)
MINI-SERIES NEWS
Actress Rachel Brosnahan (Manhattan and The Blacklist) has landed the lead role in the CBS four-hour mini-series The Dovekeepers that will be executive producers by Mark Burnett and his actress-wife Roma Downey (Touched By An Angel). The mini-series, based on the historical novel by Alice Hoffman, will center on four women whose lives intersect in a fight for survival at the siege of Masada. Set in ancient Israel, The Dovekeepers is based on the true events at Masada in 70 C.E. After being forced out of their home in Jerusalem by the Romans, 900 Jews were ensconced in a fortress at Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. Besieged at Masada, the Jews held out for months against the vast Roman armies. The cast already includes Cote de Pablo (NCIS) and Diego Boneta (Pretty Little Liars and Rock of Ages). (Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)
Q&A SECTION (with Adam Bryant at TV Guide and Michael Ausiello at TV Line)
Question: What can you tell me about Twelve and Clara’s dynamic on Doctor Who? — Aisha
Adam: Things will be very different between the pair now that the Doctor — to put it gently — has a few more years on him. In fact, without her schoolgirl crush influencing her, Clara begins to come into her own and be more assertive in their relationship. “I think she succeeds in dominating him, telling him what to do,” Peter Capaldi teases. But don’t expect him to be a total pushover. “She can only get so far with that,” Capaldi says. “Then he’ll turn. He often turns.”
Question: Can you tell me anything about the new season of Person of Interest? — Eric
Adam: Even though the “bad guys” are in control of Samaritan, executive producer Greg Plageman resists the notion that the War of the Machines is one of good vs. evil. “[Samaritan] is a machine that’s going to do what it’s dictated to do,” he says. “It’s not necessarily out to get us, it’s just that we may become collateral damage in what its goal is.” That said, Plageman did confirm that guest star Cara Buono, who was seen gunning people down in the footage revealed at Comic-Con is working for Samaritan. “In the same way that Root becomes a vessel to the Machine, Samaritan has a way of tapping operatives around the world in its own unique way,” he says. “Samaritan can see into people’s personal lives and even detect personality disorders or certain individuals who can be coerced into doing things.” Yeah, that doesn’t sound evil at all!
Question: Any scoop on Castle? —Jess, via Twitter
Adam: How about some exclusive casting news? Devious Maids star Rebecca Wisocky will guest-star in the seventh season’s third episode, “Clear & Present Danger.” She will play Dr. Elena Sarkov, the lead scientist at a cutting-edge research lab, whom the team consults when a pool shark is murdered by a mysterious unseen force. Other details about her character are being tightly guarded, but it sounds to me like the show won’t waste a lot of time getting back to its case-of-the-week structure.
Question: Any scoop at all about the fourth season of Once Upon a Time? —Advanteege
Ausiello: Is Henry en route to having his first crush? (And if so, has he picked the wrong gal?) The ABC series in casting the recurring role of Lily, a bright, self-reliant teen who boasts a “charming, take-no-prisoners punk exterior and the heart of a secretive, insecure opportunist.” Watch for this lass to first appear in Episode 5.
Question: Elizabeth Mitchell in Once Upon a Time?? Tell me more! —Jacquelyn
Ausiello: You sound plenty excited by this casting — as are Lost scribes-turned-Once creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis. “She’s awesome, we love her, we’re so happy to have her and we can’t wait for the audience to discover who she is playing,” Horowitz teases. Perhaps she’s playing someone… eeeevil? Answers Kitsis with a healthy dollop of sarcasm, “We never bring Lost actors on our show to be villains, so….”
Question: We know that the season opener of Castle starts right where we left off in the finale, but is there a time jump after those first initial scenes? —Rachael
Ausiello: Yes, the September 29 premiere features a time jump — and a rather significant one at that — but my lips are zipped about exactly when in the episode the clocks spring forward.
Question: I am dying to know the Castle Season 7 premiere title! —Sandra
Ausiello: The opener, which (per ABC) “promises to put Beckett through the toughest case of her career,” is titled “Driven.”
Question: Nashville Season 3 information? –Naomi
Ausiello: I’ve got more detail on the circumstances that bring Dancing With the Stars‘ Derek Hough into the Music City scene: The biopic in which his character, Noah West, is involved chronicles the life of Patsy Cline — and one of the women on the ABC drama’s canvas also becomes somehow involved with the film (and with Noah…?).
Question: Please tell me Victor Garber will be back in Sleepy Hollow this season. –Ava
Ausiello: Yep. The Alias alum will return for at least one episode as Ichabod’s disapproving pop, EP Mark Goffman tells TVLine. Bonus Scoop: The showrunner adds that we’ll meet Crane’s mom this season, too.
Question: Would love some NCIS: LA scoop, please — anything Hetty-related would be fantastic. —Michelle
Ausiello: Lest you suspect that the Hetty cliffhanger will neatly/quickly resolve itself as previous ones have, as Season 6 opens, “We actually see Hetty reach a point where she cannot resolve the situation herself,” showrunner Shane Brennan told Matt Mitovich. “She hits a wall, where she can’t do any more than what she’s done.” [Cue a rather unexpected savior.] Unrelated bonus scoop: Early on in Season 6, Rocky Carroll will cross over from NCIS to appear as Vance in “more than one” LA episode.
Question: What can you tell me about Brian Hallisay’s character on Revenge? I’m still not over losing Aiden, and I can’t imagine Emily is ready to move on. — Kate
Ausiello: You’re right about one thing, Emily’s not ready to jump into a new relationship. But that doesn’t mean sparks won’t fly between Emily and Hallisay’s Ben. “In the scenes they’ve had together so far, they’ve had great energy,” showrunner Sunil Nayar says. “But we want to take our time with these things; Emily has so much she’s already dealing with, we don’t want to be casual about the next person she chooses to give her heart to. That said, there’s definitely an energy between them that we’re enjoying. We didn’t bring him on to be Emily’s love interest, but by the same token, we didn’t not bring him on for that.”
Question: Any early buzz on how Doctor Who‘s new — and significantly grayer — star Peter Capaldi will differ from his predecessor Matt Smith? —Morgan
Ausiello: The Season 8 premiere, written by exec producer Steven Moffat, makes several overt references to the physical differences between the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors (whose portrayers have a real-life age difference of 25 years) — including an extended and very amusing bit about Capaldi’s “independently cross” eyebrows. That said, Capaldi himself sounds game for whatever adventures his showrunner cooks up. “The first time you make an escape through a ventilation shaft is quite special,” he notes with a laugh. One future Season 8 installment, though, sounds a little less action-adventure and a little more introspective. Indeed, Moffat promises an episode exploring “What does [the Doctor] do when he’s got nothing to do?” (One theory: Recording DVD extras about “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”)
Question: Will Scandal have some scenes shot in Washington D.C. this upcoming season? —Kyle
Ausiello: If not this season then (likely) at some point in the show’s run. “I wish, I hope, I want to,” Shonda Rhimes tells me, adding that “budgets, budgets, budgets” are the No. 1 obstacle to taking the show on the road to the nation’s capitol. “It’s expensive to go there, for any production. But we’d like to. We hope to. We’re trying to save our pennies.”
Question: Any details on Portia de Rossi’s Scandal character? —Paul
Ausiello: I tried mightily to get Rhimes to spill the beans, but all she would divulge is that the Arrested Development vet is playing “a very formidable person.” Actually, that’s a pretty decent tease, considering how tight-lipped Rhimes can be. I’m putting that in the “win” column.
That’s it. Enjoy!
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