Looks like Glenn Close has a fondness for stories about the undead. Earlier this year the Emmy winner starred in zombie sci-fi film “The Girl with All the Gifts,” and now comes word that she’ll topline “Sea Oak,” a half-hour Amazon pilot that The Hollywood Reporter describes as “a mix of the zombie drama and family revenge comedy.” Novelist George Saunders penned the project. No word on who will direct.
The show follows Aunt Bernie (Close), “a meek, unmarried woman with no children in working-class Rust Belt City who dies tragically in a home invasion,” THR summarizes. “Compelled by sheer force of dissatisfaction, she comes back from the dead full of rage and determined to get the life she never had. She proceeds to inflict a range of demands on what’s left of her nuclear family, including a quasi-stripper nephew and two feckless nieces, who live in a low-end subsidized hellhole of a housing complex called Sea Oak.”
“Sea Oak” marks the six-time Oscar nominee’s first series regular role since FX/DirecTV’s “Damages.” The legal drama ran for five seasons and concluded in 2012. Close earned two Emmys for her role in the show, and also snagged an Emmy in 1995 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.”
Other zombie-centric shows currently on air include The CW’s “iZombie,” co-created by Diane Ruggiero, and Netflix’s Drew Barrymore-starrer “The Santa Clarita Diet.”
Close is currently on Broadway reprising a role that won her a Tony, Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard.” Her upcoming projects include a film adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s novel “The Wife.” Written by Jane Anderson (“Olive Kitteridge,” “Mad Men”), the drama sees Close playing a woman best known as the wife of an incredibly successful writer. She’s dedicated years of her life to nurturing her husband’s career, but a revelation causes her to reconsider their relationship and her future. The film is in post-production.
