Television
TV: Shonda Rhimes Books Third ABC Show Starring Viola Davis
The female flight from features to TV continues with Viola Davis booking the leading role on the third ABC show from Shonda Rhimes to appear on ABC’s fall schedule. According to the Hollywood...
TV: Series Pick-Ups for Katherine Heigl, Alfre Woodard, Octavia Spencer, Gabourey Sidibe
With the fall television season just four months away, here are some of the new women-starring network shows that have been confirmed to air: — Red Band Society (Fox). After the Murder, She Wrote...
Callie Khouri Talks Nashville Season 2 Conclusion (No Spoilers)
I’ve been very lucky to be able to talk with Nashville creator Callie Khouri a bunch of times over the last two seasons. THe show has two more episodes (one airs tonight) and the team is still...
TV: Orange is the New Black Renewed for Season 3
A month before the long awaited return of Orange is the New Black for its sophomore season, Netflix went ahead and renewed the groundbreaking series for a third year. That bodes well for the...
Why Leslie Jones’ Controversial Slavery Sketch on SNL Was So Important
On May 3rd, Leslie Jones made her debut on Saturday Night Live. Jones was one of the three black women that SNL hired in January in response to the criticism over the show’s lack of diversity, and...
TV: Queen Latifah to Star as Bessie Smith in HBO Biopic
Queen Latifah will play jazz and blues legend Bessie Smith in an HBO movie written and directed by Dee Rees. Latifah will also serve as an executive producer on the project. An adaptation of Chris...
Meet the New Women and Hollywood Columnists
I am thrilled to introduce you to the new Women and Hollywood columnists who will be taking up their posts beginning next week: Sara Stewart will be handling the weekly TV beat. She also works at...
TV: J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy to Be Adapted for HBO and BBC
J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy will be adapted into a three-hour miniseries for HBO and the BBC. Set in the picturesque English village of Pagford, the novel is Rowling’s first book after...
Crosspost: The Time of Her Life
Crossposted with permission from DGA Quarterly. Lee Shallat Chemel was recently directing an episode of the critically acclaimed single-camera comedy The Middle when it suddenly dawned on her how...
TV: Keke Palmer to Become Youngest-Ever Talk Show Host
Keke Palmer will make talk-show history by becoming television’s youngest-ever host. The 20-year-old star of Akeelah and The Bee and Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP will headline a daytime show...
TV: Trailer Watch: Orange is the New Black Season 2
At last, at last. Netflix has released a trailer for the second season of Orange is the New Black, and it seems the red-envelope suits have gotten the memo: this isn’t just Piper’s show. We...
TV: The Maya Rudolph Show to Debut in May
After a long-delayed debut, The Maya Rudolph Show finally has a premiere date: Monday, May 19 at 10 PM. Except here’s the catch: it’s yet unclear whether Rudolph’s variety show will be a...
Cartoon: Who Will Take Letterman’s Chair?
Cross-posted from The Nib. Liza Donnelly is the author of the book Women on Men.
Orange is the New Black, Scandal, Borgen Among Peabody Winners
The Peabody Awards have named a record 46 winners this year in their ongoing efforts to recognizing “stories that matter.” Twenty of the awardees (43%) — which range from journalism to...
TV: Latina Women Demand SNL Hire Latina Comedienne After Offensive Caricature
Taking inspiration from the sustained campaign that led to Saturday Night Live’s hiring of Sasheer Zamata, the first black comedienne to join the cast in nearly seven years, Twitter activists have...
TV: Addiction Unmoors Nurse Jackie in Season 6 Sneak Peek
Showtime has released a video previewing the upcoming season of Nurse Jackie, which finds Edie Falco’s damaged-caretaker character back in the grips of her pill addiction. Season six looks like a...
Jennifer Lopez to Receive GLAAD Award
Jennifer Lopez will receive GLAAD’s Vanguard Award later this spring. The award honors entertainers who have made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for LGBT people. Lopez will...
WGA Lobbying for NY Tax Breaks for Diverse Writers’ Rooms
The Writers Guild of America-East is currently lobbying the New York State legislature to receive tax breaks for diverse writers’ rooms. Of the $420 million in tax credits currently allocated to...
TV: Alfre Woodard to Play First Black Female POTUS on NBC’s State of Affairs
The list of black actors who have occupied the Oval Office on the big and small screen is long: Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Blair Underwood, Jamie Foxx,...
Women Comprise Majority of WGA’s 2014 Writer Access Project Honorees
Since 2009, the Writers Guild of America has held the Writer Access Project (WAP) — a competition that discovers and awards mid-level players from one of five diversity categories: minority...
TV: Melonie Diaz to Star in HBO Drama About PTSD
Fruitvale Station co-star Melonie Diaz is in talks to star as a PTSD-afflicted veteran in the HBO drama Laughs Unlimited (working title). Oren Moverman (Rampart, The Messenger) and Anthony Swafford...
Lena Dunham’s Feminist Week: From SNL to SXSW
Girls’ fictional protagonist Hannah Horvath proclaimed she was “the voice of my generation” in a fit of self-delusion and opium tea, but her creator Lena Dunham is proving she has a lot of...
TV: The “Golden Age of Television” is Really White and Really Male
“’Crazy’ mistresses, nameless strippers, randy hookups, disgruntled daughters, dismayed wives.” That’s how TV critic Maureen Ryan sums up most of the female characters we see on True...
TV: Mary-Louise Parker to Star in NBC Sitcom Feed Me
Before winning over potheads everywhere as drug-dealing suburbanite Nancy Botwin on Jenji Kohan’s Weeds, Mary-Louise Parker first gained notice playing feminist lobbyist Amy Gardner on NBC’s The...
TV: How House of Cards’ Claire Underwood Stacks Against Other Anti-Heroines
House of Cards, Netflix’s buzzy political drama, started life as a remake of a British miniseries. Starring Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, an amoral, ambitious member of Congress, it also felt...
TV: Trailer Watch: Emily Mortimer’s New HBO Sitcom About Female Friendship
Emily Mortimer has been badly disserved by The Newsroom, a show full of female characters who are little more than incompetent dingbats, and whose character MacKenzie’s entire existence revolves...
Viola Davis to Star in Shonda Rhimes’ Next Show
The return of Scandal tomorrow night after a three-month hiatus isn’t the only good news to come out of Shondaland. Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis (The Help, Prisoners) has signed on to star...
TV: Jamie Lee Curtis Heads to CBS
Jamie Lee Curtis’ most recent roles have been on Fox’s New Girl (playing Zooey Deschanel’s mom) and CBS’ NCIS (playing Mark Harmon’s love interest), so it makes sense that the Freaky...
TV: Jennifer Lopez to Headline NBC Cop Drama Shades of Blue
Jennifer Lopez doesn’t get enough credit for her reinventions. Since the early 1990s, the former Fly Girl has tried on as many showbiz hats as Madonna: fashion icon, Latin ingenue, pop star,...
Helen Mirren Speaks Out Against Rise of Dead Women on TV
I’ve been catching up on Twin Peaks for the past few months, and it’s been fascinating to see how heavily David Lynch’s 1990–1991 series still influences today’s TV landscape. The show’s...
TV: Lisa Edelstein, Janeane Garofalo to Star in Marti Noxon’s New Bravo Series
Is the Real Housewives’ reign of terror finally over? Bravo has greenlit its first scripted program, an hour-long dramedy from Glee and Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer Marti Noxon called...
TV: Prime Suspect Prequel Headed to Bookstores and ITV
Writer Lynda LaPlante has announced she’s bringing back her biggest hit, Prime Suspect, as a prequel. The seven-season crime series made Helen Mirren a household name and a Hollywood movie star...
The Web is a Great Place for Women
Leena Pendharkar: I moved to LA in 2005, armed with severalfeature-film screenplays like any other aspiring writer. But I learnedsomething really strange once I got here: Hollywood isn’t always...
TV: Octavia Spencer, JoAnna Garcia Swisher to Headline New Shows
Angela Lansbury may have put the kibosh on the Murder, She Wrote reboot, but Octavia Spencer won’t be kept from TV. The Oscar-winning Fruitvale Station co-star has signed up for Fox’s hospital...
TV: Black Female Creators Discuss Responsibilities, Opportunities
Among the most interesting discussions this week about the difficulties and possibilities of culture creation today was a 30-minute roundtable discussion posted on YouTube called “The State of...
How The Mary Tyler Moore Show Got Women’s Stories Just Right
If you grew up in the 1970s, chances are you remember watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Saturday nights, most likely with other female members of your family. You probably also remember the...
Real Talk on the Women of True Detective
It’s impossible to deny the pleasures of watching long-time friends and sometime acting partners Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson onscreen together. Currently, the two men are starring in...
UCLA Releases Scathing Report on Diversity in Film and TV
Just when you thought it was safe to be hopeful again, here comes another reality check. The Bunche Center at UCLA has released its annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” to remind us that we’re...
Catherine Hardwicke and Marti Noxon Get Series Orders
Cable just keeps getting better. Catherine Hardwicke and Marti Noxon have announced separate TV projects, both rather intriguing. Hardwicke, who’s built her career on young-adult fare like...
TV: Greta Gerwig to Write, Produce, and Star in CBS’s “How I Met Your Dad”
After co-writing and starring in the indie sensation Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig has signed up for the lead role in CBS’s How I Met Your Dad, a spin-off of the long-running sitcom How I Met...
TV: Why Parenthood Is One of Television’s Best Shows About Marriage
As television’s revival hasreinvigorated the water-cooler discussion, many of the moments viewers have to talk about with someone have come fromcable. Hannah Horvath spends a sexy weekend with a...
Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks Reunite — as Director and Producer
Few actresses are the target of as many comeback rumors as Meg Ryan. After 2003’s In the Cut, the Jane Campion thriller she had hoped would be her reinvention, Ryan disappeared into quickly...
TV: Tea Leoni Cast as Star of Madam Secretary
Earlier this week, we reported that Homeland writer Barbara Hall was developing a political drama for CBS called Madam Secretary that would center on an “maverick” Secretary of State. The...
TV: Margaret Cho Joins Tina Fey’s Women’s College Comedy
Tina Fey’s 30 Rock has only been off the air for a year, but it feels like a lot longer. TV has never been better, and yet nothing’s been able to replace the Lemon-sized hole 30 Rock’s...
TV: The Staying Power of Veronica Mars
In the past year, Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas’ procedural about a high-school girl (Kristen Bell) who became a private investigator, has been back in the news cycle repeatedly. That’s not...
TV: Rashida Jones Leaves Pawnee for Tribeca
When Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones announced last year that she’d be leaving America’s most civic-minded sitcom, she had her choice of projects to choose from. Deadline reports that,...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Thanks to Emma Thompson’s biggest fan Meryl Streep, we now know that the Saving Mr. Banks star cares about what she’s contributing to pop culture at large, both as an actress and a writer. In...
Women Directors Nominated in Nearly Every Narrative Category at DGA-TV Awards
Television is much kinder to women. The opportunities are greater, the stories richer, riskier, and more varied. TV isn’t a haven for women by any means, but they do get more chances to prove...
TV: A Preview of Girls’ Third Season from TCA
Lena Dunham’s Girls, which returns to HBO for its third season on Sunday night, can be difficult to see as simply a television show. When it premiered in 2012, the series, which follows the lives...
When the Little Gals Get Stepped On: How Huff Po Stole from Women and Hollywood
Last night I got an email from a friend with a link to a Huffington Post piece he thought I would be interested in. I clicked on it and to my immediate alarm, I realized it was a piece that had been...
Why Judd Apatow Directing Amy Schumer in Trainwreck is a Great Thing
It looks like we’ll be able to look forward to at least one mid-budget female-driven comedy every summer. 2011 had Bridesmaids; 2012, Pitch Perfect. After last year’s The Heat, we’ll have...