Pilot news continues to roll in. The previously announced gender-swapped “Greatest American Hero” reboot has found its star: “New Girl’s” Hannah Simone. And CBS drama pilot “Chiefs” has tapped Alana De La Garza (“Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders”) to lead and Zetna Fuentes (“How To Get Away with Murder”) to direct. Fuentes is the third first-time broadcast pilot director to be hired for the 2018–2019 season, after Kat Coiro (“Daddy Issues”) and Lake Bell (“Bless This Mess”).
The new “Greatest American Hero” will see Simone play the hard-partying Meera, whose aimlessness is a disappointment to her traditional Indian-American family. Suddenly, Meera finds direction and purpose in her life when she’s bestowed a super suit and is tasked with protecting the planet. “Fresh Off the Boat” collaborators Rachna Fruchbom and Nahnatchka Khan are executive producing. The former will pen the pilot.
Per Deadline, Simone is “believed to be playing the first woman of color superhero lead of a live-action TV series.” The actress was one of the most in-demand performers for the 2018–19 pilot season and received multiple offers before selecting “The Greatest American Hero.”
Simone is best known as “New Girl’s” Cece, the best friend of series lead Zooey Deschanel. The seventh and final season of the Fox comedy will premiere in April. She was recently seen in “Band Aid,” Zoe Lister-Jones’ dark comedy about a couple who begin a band to sort out their marital issues.
“Chiefs” centers on three very different female Chiefs of Police in LA County, one of whom will be played by De La Garza. Close friends, the three women “band together to create a task force to catch a dangerous serial killer,” Deadline summarizes. The other two leads have not yet been cast.
David Hudgins (“Parenthood”) is writing and will executive produce with Carol Mendelsohn and Julie Weitz of Carol Mendelsohn Productions.
De La Garza has also appeared in CBS series “Scorpion” and “CSI: Miami.” She starred as Clara Seger on “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” for two seasons.
Although “Chiefs” is Fuentes’ first broadcast pilot, she has directed TV many times before. Her credits include “Jane the Virgin,” “The Chi,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Fuentes, Bell, and Coiro’s hirings could be a good sign for the number of women behind-the-scenes in the upcoming TV season. Not only were no female first-time pilot directors tapped for the 2017–18 pilot season, there were no first-time pilot directors hired at all.
Simone and De La Garza’s hirings are also significant. According to Dr. Martha Lauzen’s most recent “Boxed In” TV study, the number of female characters or color are still dismally low. Asian females comprised only seven percent of characters on broadcast programs in 2016–17, up two percentage points from 2015–16. The number of Latinas has remained stagnant at five percent for the past two years. Let’s hope the casting of “Greatest American Hero” and “Chiefs” is a harbinger of things to come for women of color on TV.
