'That '70s Show' Dad Joins NBC Pilot

Zap2It.com | October 24, 2007

Kurtwood Smith

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Legal drama adds Kurtwood Smith, Frankie Faison

A pair of veteran actors have joined a fast-tracking drama pilot at NBC.

Kurtwood Smith ("That '70s Show") and Frankie Faison ("The Wire") have joined the cast of the network's legal drama from writer Luke Reiter. The untitled pilot, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld ("Pushing Daisies"), began production this week in New York.

Elsewhere at NBC, April Lee Hernandez ("Freedom Writers") has joined the cop show pilot "Blue Blood," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The Reiter pilot is set at a prestigious law firm populated with driven and sometimes unscrupulous lawyers. The cast also includes Alan Tudyk ("Serenity"), Andrew Leonard, Megan Dodds and Christina Vidal.

Smith, whose credits also include "Girl, Interrupted" and "Dead Poets Society," will play a senior attorney at the firm, while Faison ("In Good Company," "The Silence of the Lambs") is set to play a detective investigating a homicide connected to the firm.

In "Blue Blood," Hernandez joins Logan Marshall-Green and Larenz Tate in a show about rookie cops in New York. It's based on a memoir by NYPD cop/New Yorker writer Edward Conlon; Brett Ratner is slated to direct.