The SNL alum will star in Apple’s first half-hour comedy.
Kristen Wiig is about to make her way back to television in a big way. The actress and Saturday Night Live legend has signed on for a 10-episode series — Apple’s first half-hour comedy — as both star and executive producer. According to The Hollywood Reporter, there was a fierce bidding war for the project, but Apple was very competitive in its offer. The series is inspired by Curtis Sittenfeld’s upcoming short-story collection “You Think It, I’ll Say It” and is another show being produced by Reese Witherspoon‘s Hello Sunshine banner.
30 Rock‘s Collen McGuiness created the new series, which is still untitled, and will be the showrunner. No studio is attached to the project yet, but everything is set to be in motion shortly. This is a surprising turn for Wiig, who had some exciting, albeit brief, roles in recent movies such as mother! and Downsizing. She also appeared in a few episodes on the Fox show The Last Man on Earth last year. But the new series will mark her first headlining gig in quite awhile. Her most prominent film roles since leaving SNL in 2012 were in Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters.
This is the third project Apple has set up with Witherspoon, joining the untitled morning show drama and a series with Octavia Spencer called Are You Sleeping. This new entry also marks the fifth show that Apple has commissioned into series including the Steven Spielberg-produced Amazing Stories anthology series and the Ron Moore space drama See.
There is no question that the success of Big Little Lies has brought Witherspoon significant power in Hollywood. She struggled to bring that project together originally, but now that studios have seen its success, they all want to have a Hello Sunshine production. Unfortunately for everyone else, Apple seems to have them on lock at the moment.
Related Topics: Apple, Kristen Wiig, Reese Witherspoon
