Nadine Velasquez seeks a Husband for Hire in a made-for-Oxygen telepic about a Latina businesswoman who must sign on a spouse, and quick, or forfeit her inheritance. (Tale as old as time, I know.) Mark Consuelos, the host of NBC's forthcoming Age of Love dating series, is Velasquez's insta-groom. Rounding out the cast, says Variety, are Mario Lopez, Erik Estrada (see today's CHiPs-related Q&A) and Tempestt Bledsoe.
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No offense to the current crop of motorcycle cops cruising the City of Angels, but the California Highway Patrol has never looked better than when Erik Estrada was riding high as Officer Francis Llewellyn "Ponch" Poncherello alongside Larry Wilcox's Jon Baker on CHiPs (1977-83). For six years, the blow-dried and beloved sex symbol broke racial barriers and battled NBC, while forever cementing his status as an icon on wheels. So in honor of the show's Tuesday debut on DVD, we rang up Estrada to get the dish on CHiPs — including Ponch's nationality switch, and the money dispute that almost got him "Olympically" canned.
TVGuide.com: Let's talk about the first season of CHiPs, which just came out on DVD. It's about damn time!Erik Estrada: I know. Through the years people would come up to me and say, "W
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Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have been cast as the leads in Doubt, the Miramax adaptation of the John Patrick Shanley play about a priest accused of pedophilia by a nun.... Ocean's Umpteen BFFs George Clooney and Brad Pitt will reteam in the Coen brother's hush-hush comedy Burn After Reading, about a CIA agent who misplaces the disc of the book he's been writing.... Did Louis Gossett Jr. accept nearly $40,000 in Lakers tickets without ponying up the dough? Not on your life, he tells TMZ.com, maintaining that someone forged his signature.... Erik Estrada has been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Which means the only people left who don't have one are Jan Smithers and that dog from Frasier.
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CBS’ new reality series Armed & Famous, premiering tonight (at 8 pm/ET) and airing a second episode tomorrow, trains such celebrities as Jack Osbourne, La Toya Jackson and — naturally — CHiPs’ Erik Estrada to be real-life cops serving and protecting the people of Muncie, Ind. We talked to Estrada about upholding the law.
TV Guide: Why’d you do this?Erik Estrada: It helped fulfill my childhood dream. From the age of 7 to 17, I wanted to be a New York City cop, but I got bit by the acting bug. Then CHiPs came along, and I got
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CBS has set a Jan. 10 debut for Armed & Famous, a reality series in which Erik Estrada, Jack Osbourne, La Toya Jackson and others brave a police academy and then go on patrol — strapped and all — in Muncie, Indiana.... Oxygen has announced a Jan. 10 premiere for Season 2 of The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.... Disney Channel's Cory in the House, a spin-off of That's So Raven, premieres Jan. 12.... E! is developing High Maintenance 90210, a look at the domestic staffers of the rich, famous and super-demanding.
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