For the Fox network, former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Will Forte will star as Danny in "Rebounding," a single-camera comedy pilot about a man recovering from his fiancee's death with the help of his pickup basketball team. And Chris Messina (Broadway's "Salome") has joined the cast of Mindy Kaling's pilot, another single-camera comedy for Fox. Kaling ("The Office") stars as an ob-gyn balancing her personal and professional lives.
Angela Bassett (recently on Broadway in "The Mountaintop") and Julian McMahon ("Nip/Tuck") are in final negotiations to co-star in an untitled Fox drama pilot as CIA agents.
Over at ABC, Brad Garrett ("Everybody Loves Raymond") has been cast as the stepfather of a newly divorced single mom (Sarah Chalke) in the multicamera comedy pilot "How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life." Meanwhile, Stockard Channing (who took a hiatus from "Other Desert Cities" to shoot the pilot) will play Mandy Moore's mother in an untitled comedy.
Vanessa Williams ("Desperate Housewives") is moving from Wisteria Lane to the Upper East Side in "666 Park Avenue," a supernatural drama about mysterious occurrences in a historic New York City apartment building. "Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry also has a new pilot for ABC, "Devious Maids," about four maids who work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Daytime icon Susan Lucci will co-star as a beautiful and wealthy employer in the prime-time soap.
Another refugee from "Desperate Housewives," Kyle MacLachlan, will co-star in the CBS pilot "Baby Big Shot," a legal drama about a working-class woman who uses her street smarts to compete with her more polished colleagues at a top New York law firm. Also at CBS, Patti Murin, who played the title role in "Lysistrata Jones" on Broadway this season, has been cast in an untitled Louis C.K.-Spike Feresten comedy.
Cable networks also continue to attract stars. Carla Gugino, who recently appeared on Broadway in "The Road to Mecca," will star opposite Sigourney Weaver in "Political Animals," a six-episode series that premieres in the summer on USA. Gugino plays a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who becomes an unlikely ally to former first lady and newly appointed Secretary of State Elaine Barrish (Weaver). This is Weaver's first role as a series regular on TV.
Neal McDonough ("Justified") will star in TNT's "L.A. Noir," written and directed by Frank Darabont ("The Walking Dead"), a period piece about LAPD Police Chief William Parker's fight to root out corruption in the police department and bring down mobster Mickey Cohen. Sounds like "Mad Men" with guns.
