Toni Collette will star in and executive produce ABC’s “Unit Zero,” Deadline reports. The series, an action dramedy, comes from “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris and producer Lindsey Shockley.
The series, Deadline writes, “follows a brilliant, but unassuming CIA engineer and single mom, Jackie Fink (Collette), as she leads a team of CIA underlings who are thrust into the field as first time spies. Each week, this team of zeroes races against the clock to gather intelligence and solve cases of national security. And they succeed partly because no one in their right mind would ever suspect they were spies.”
Shockley will write the script, with Barris joining Collette to executive produce.
“I’m so excited to be able to tell this story which is so personal to me,” said Shockley. “At its core, this show is about outsiders, those of us who don’t fit in. It celebrates everything that’s beautiful about being different.”
“This show is really important to me because it fits into the type of television that I love doing,” Barris explained. “It pulls back the curtain on what it’s like to be a woman in a historically male-dominated field, and it shows underrepresented voices. Most importantly, it starts a conversation while being funny.”
Barris and Shockley share in the first best comedy series Emmy nomination for “Black-ish.”
Collette won a Golden Globe for her role on Showtime’s “United States of Tara” and can now be seen in “Imperium.”
