Their shows may be finished but your favorite stars are still keeping busy on new projects.
Former Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham has been signed to a seven-figure deal with NBC. As a result, the network will develop either a comedy or a drama for the actress.
Annie Potts (Designing Women) has joined the cast of joined TNT’s one-hour pilot Family Man. She’ll be playing the wife of William H. Macy who stars as a respected father and an unlikely leader of a group of burglars.
Orla Brady has been cast in several episodes of James Woods’ CBS drama Shark. She’ll be taking over the role of Woods’ ex-wife which was played by Lindsay Frost (Crossing Jordan) in the series pilot. You may remember Brady from her role as Naoise O’Neill on the 1999-2002 Tony Danza legal series Family Law.
Unfortunately, TV Guide has now recounted their tip that Charisma Carpenter (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will appear on NBC’s upcoming celebrity edition of The Apprentice. Even better though, she’s nabbed a recurring role on ABC’s new drama Big Shots starting November 1st. She’s also been cast in a single episode of the new Kelsey Grammer/Paricia Heaton FOX sitcom Back to You.
Speaking of Angel, you can catch Christian Kane (attorney Lindsey McDonald on the Buffy spin-off and Jack Chase on CBS’ Close to Home) in the video for the new Carrie Underwood song So Small. You can watch it here.
Several familiar TV actors have been cast in Dimension Films’ upcoming action parody about comic book heroes. Leslie Nielsen (Police Squad!), Marion Ross (Happy Days), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars), and Brent Spiner (Threshold, Star Trek: The Next Generation) will all be appearing in Superhero! The film spoof is being directed by Craig Marin (who wrote two of the Scary Movie sequels) and will be produced by David Zucker (Airplane!, Police Squad!) and Robert K. Weiss (the Naked Gun movies, Sliders).
Giovanni Ribisi (Phoebe’s brother on Friends) has been signed to join the cast of James Cameron’s 3-D feature Avatar. Ribisi will play a passive-aggressive character named Selfridge in the film that revolves around humans battling against a distant planet’s inhabitants. Avatar is scheduled for a May 22, 2009 release. Stay tuned! 
