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Exclusive: Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children), Tony nominee Maria Dizzia (Orange Is the New Black) and Jeremy Bobb (The Knick) are set for key recurring roles on Showtime’s upcoming anthology series The First Lady, starring Viola Davis — who also executive produces — Michelle Pfeiffer and Gillian Anderson. Cathy Schulman serves as showrunner. Susanne Bier (The Undoing) will direct and executive produce.

Created by Aaron Cooley and produced by Lionsgate TV and Showtime, The First Lady is a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House. Season 1 focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt (Anderson), Betty Ford (Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Davis).

Haley, Dizzia and Bobb will appear in the Eleanor Roosevelt (Anderson) story.

Haley will play Louis McHenry Howe, a former reporter for the New York Herald who spent the majority of his life serving as political advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt...

Exclusive: Clea DuVall (Veep) and Charlie Plummer (All the Money in the World) are set for key recurring roles in Showtime’s upcoming anthology series The First Lady, starring Viola Davis — who also executive produces — Michelle Pfeiffer and Gillian Anderson. Cathy Schulman serves as showrunner. Susanne Bier (The Undoing) will direct and executive produce.

Created by Aaron Cooley and produced by Lionsgate TV and Showtime, The First Lady is a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House. Season 1 focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt (Anderson), Betty Ford (Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Davis).

DuVall will play Malvina “Tommy” Thompson: Eleanor Roosevelt’s trusted assistant, secretary, traveling companion, gatekeeper and dear friend. Irreverent, funny, and a shrewd judge of character, Tommy was utterly devoted to Eleanor and together they trailblazed women’s advocacy, taking no prisoners as they went.

Plummer will play young Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Lily Rabe is set as a lead in Showtime’s upcoming anthology series The First Lady, starring Viola Davis — who also executive produces — Michelle Pfeiffer and Gillian Anderson. Cathy Schulman serves as showrunner. Susanne Bier (The Undoing) will direct and executive produce. The role reunites Rabe with Bier, who recently directed the actress in HBO’s The Undoing limited series.

Created by Aaron Cooley and produced by Lionsgate TV and Showtime, The First Lady is a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House. Season 1 focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt (Anderson), Betty Ford (Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Davis).

Rabe will play Lorena “Hick” Hickock, a pioneering American journalist, who by 1932 became America’s best-known female reporter and was a devoted friend and mentor to Eleanor Roosevelt. After 3,000 of their mutual letters were discovered, the nature of the relationship between Hick...

Kiefer Sutherland is getting political for his next big role as a former president of the United States. The veteran actor, who previously played a man who becomes the president in Designated Survivor, has been tapped to play President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Showtime's upcoming anthology series The First Lady. Aaron Cooley created the series and will also write several of the episodes as well.

Set through multiple time periods, The First Lady delves into the history of American leadership through the point of view of some of history's most revered First Ladies. The series stars Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford, the three of whom will be the primary focus of the first season. Also set for the cast are Aaron Eckhart as President Gerald Ford, O-t Fagbenle as President Barack Obama, and Dakota Fanning as Susan Elizabeth Ford.

Exclusive: Emmy nominee Kate Mulgrew (Orange Is the New Black) is set for a recurring role on Showtime’s upcoming anthology series The First Lady (wt). Additionally, Oscar winner Cathy Schulman (Crash) has been named showrunner of the series starring Viola Davis, who also executive produces, Michelle Pfeiffer and Gillian Anderson. Susanne Bier (The Undoing) will direct and executive produce.

The First Lady (wt), created by Aaron Cooley and produced by Lionsgate TV and Showtime, is a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House. Season 1 focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt (Anderson), Betty Ford (Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Davis).

Mulgrew will play Susan Sher, a longtime friend of the Obamas who worked with Michelle in Chicago health care. Sher was originally hired as the President’s associate counsel but then rejoined Michelle Obama as her closest confidante and chief of staff.

Exclusive: Lincoln and Mr. Robot actress Gloria Reuben has boarded both Blumhouse/Weed Road/Universal’s Firestarter and Showtime’s limited series The First Lady about the women at the heart of the White House. I’m told that Reuben has a leading role in Firestarter.

Season one of the Aaron Cooley created, Lionsgate and Showtime produced series focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis). Cooley will write several of the episodes and serve as EP.

Reuben will portray Valerie June Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama. Jarrett was Michelle Obama’s friend and former boss, whom Michelle credits with teaching her about personal growth in the workplace. Oscar winner Cathy Schulman (Crash), Viola Davis, Julius Tennon, Andrew Wang, Susanne Bier, Jeff Gaspin (Rhythm + Flow), and Brad Kaplan (Mr. Church) are also EPs on The First Lady.

Firestarter is directed by Keith Thomas,...

Exclusive: It may be erroneous to call the melding of rapper Tablo, Scooter Braun’s Sb Projects, Emmy nominee Jason Kim and Amazon a K-pop supergroup. However, the quartet certainly are embracing the genre, if not the notion.

Under the first-look deal that the Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato manager has with the Jeff Bezos-founded streamer, the four have teamed up to develop Neon Machine, I learned.

Working with a predominately Korean producing team, the comedy series created by Barry producer/writer Kim tells the tale of an out-of-left-field K-pop superstar who hits a global chord but might lose it all in the process. Kim will executive produce along with Epik High leader Tablo and Sb’s Braun, James Shin and Scott Manson.

In addition to having high-profile content with Netflix, YouTube and 20th Century Studios, among others, Sb Projects inked a multi-year with Amazon Studios back in mid-...

Exclusive: The century-old story of Bruce’s Beach, which has been garnering national attention amid an effort to return the land to the owners’ descendants, will be subject of a scripted TV series. The project, from Brad Pitt’s Plan B and Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions, is in development at Amazon Studios.

Bruce’s Beach was a beach resort in the city of Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles, in the early 1900s. Owned by and operated for African Americans, Bruce’s Beach provided opportunities for the Black community that were not available at other beach areas because of racial segregation. The series plans to explore the dynamic life of the Bruce’s Beach community in the spirit of Black livelihood and leisure, as envisioned by the Bruce family in its creation.

Amazon Studios has acquired Alison Rose Jefferson’s book Bruce’s Beach, Living The California...

Exclusive: Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions has set comedy Unf$?%ables (working title) at Hulu for development.

Co-written by Jeremy Hsu (Jimmy Kimmel Live!) loosely inspired by his own experiences, Unf$?%ables is set in the world of dating.

There’s the dating pool, and there’s the bottom of it…meet two best friends who, against their wishes, live there full time…an Asian American male and an African American female, best friends who are determined to no longer be deemed ?unf***able.”

Hsu co-executive produces. John Strauss (David Makes Man) is co-writing with Hsu and serves as executive producer and showrunner. Davis, Tennon and Andrew Wang executive produce for JuVee Prods. ABC Signature is the studio.

“We are really excited for this show. Jeremy Hsu and John Struss have created a show that at its core is truthful, funny, charming, and heartfelt, a perfect fit...

Damien Sato and Kathy Luu.

Actor, writer and producer Joy Hopwood is directing her second feature, Rhapsody of Love, a rom-com starring Asian-Australians Damien Sato and Kathy Luu.

Further reflecting the project’s diversity, producers Hopwood and Ana Tiwary have hired women in key creative roles.

Now shooting in Sydney, the plot follows four couples at different stages of their relationships and examines how love sometimes develops when it is least expected.

The ensemble cast includes Lily Stewart, Khan Chittenden, Benjamin Hanly, Jessica Niven, Tom Jackson, Hopwood, Amanda Benson, Sam Wang, Erica Long, Michael Giglio and Andrew Wang.

Among the heads of department are Aftrs graduate Goldie Soetianto as Dop, sound recordist Lara Cross, set designer Jessie Singh and editor Jon Cohen.

Asked on Facebook if Rhapsody of Love would be more relatable than Crazy Rich Asians, Luu, whose credits include The Good Place, Fighting Season and The Unlisted, said:...

Exclusive: Amazon Studios is developing Fast Color, a TV series based on the 2018 sci-fi film, I have learned. The project comes from Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions, along with feature’s writers Julia Hart and Jordan Horowitz and their Original Headquarters as well as Mickey Liddell’s Ld Entertainment.

The film, co-written by Hart and Horowitz, directed by Hart and released by Lionsgate/Code Black in April, features three generations of black women, Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), her mom Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and Ruth’s daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney), at the center of an original science fiction world. It premiered to critical praise at SXSW in 2018 and drew social media buzz. The film was released on BluRay/DVD/VOD on July 16. You can watch a trailer below.

The television series will follow Ruth, a former drug addict and runaway, who returns home and rediscovers the special powers she thought she lost,...