In casting news that sounds so wild it’ll most likely turn out to be a stroke of genius, WandaVision‘s Kathryn Hahn is attached to play Joan Rivers in a new limited series called The Comeback Girl that’s set up at Showtime. The prolific Greg Berlanti will direct and executive produce the project, with Cosmo Carlson writing the entire run of episodes, as per Variety.
Marvel Cinematic Universe fans may have been outraged when Hahn was snubbed at the weekend’s Primetime Emmy Awards for her grandstanding turn as Agatha Harkness in the Disney Plus show, but she’s still lauded as one of the finest comedic actresses in the business, even if playing the often incendiary Rivers will be a monumental challenge.
The Comeback Girl will predominantly focus on Rivers from the mid-1980s onward when she was in her mid-50s, so there’s definitely going to be some prosthetics involved given the fact she looks absolutely nothing like 48 year-old Hahn to begin with, never mind post-surgery. Rivers initially shot to fame in the 1960s, and blazed a trail for female comedians that’s seen her go down in the history books as an icon.
Hahn and Berlanti actually went to university together, so they’ve been friends for a very long time, it’s just taken them a couple of decades to find the right material to work on together. If the core creative team can pull this one off, then they may as well etch her name on the Emmy already, this time for real.
Published: Sep 21, 2021 02:18 pm