Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATION

CBS has renewed the following dramas for the 2026-2027 TV season: Tracker, Matlock, Elsbeth, Fire Country, NCIS, NCIS: Origins and NCIS: Sydney. (Variety)

Netflix has pulled the plug on the western-themed period drama The Abandons after only one season. (The Hollywood Reporter)

The prequel series Elle, based on the Legally Blonde films, which won’t debut on Amazon Prime until July 1, has been renewed for a second season already. (Deadline)

TV CASTING NEWS

Laura Donnelly (Outlander and The Nevers) and Nick Robinson (Jurassic World and Love, Victor) will star opposite Michael Fassbender in the Netflix drama series Kennedy that will explore the lives, loves, rivalries and tragedies of the Kennedy family. Fassbender will play Joe Kennedy, Sr., Donnelly will play his wife Rose Kennedy, Robinson will play their son Joe Kennedy Jr. (Deadline)

Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction and Desperately Seeking Susan) will recur in the upcoming second season of Amazon Prime’s Ballard that stars Maggie Q as Renee Ballard. Arquette will play Jenny Ballard, Renee’s mother. (Deadline)

Sam Heughan (Outlander) will star alongside Anna Kendrick and J.K. Simmons in the upcoming geo-political action thriller series Embassy. Heughan will play a British SAS soldier in the six part-series that follows Layla (Kendrick), a sharp and resourceful American diplomat, who faces an impossible choice to protect the U.S. Ambassador (Simmons) or follow his orders to exfiltrate a high value asset when armed mercenaries storm the U.S. Embassy in London. She’s forced to rely on her instincts and the reluctant help of her battle-hardened ex-fiancé, Connor Wright (Heughan), in the tense hours before extraction. Embassy has yet to be picked up by any platform in the U.S. just yet though. (Deadline)

The Chicago Fire character Chief Dominick “Dom” Pascal, as portrayed by Dermot Mulroney, will be spending some time off-camera for the latter part of the show’s 14th season, and this break will last until the end of the current season. Meanwhile, Rob Morgan (Mudbound and The Last Black Man in San Francisco) will have a recurring role in the show playing Battalion Chief Hopkins, who has a long, haunted past in overseeing several Chicago firehouses and is quick to assert authority over his colleagues. (Deadline)

That’s it. Enjoy!