Ricki Lake, whose Lifetime telefilm Matters of Life and Dating premiered Oct. 22, is busy promoting her new documentary, The Business of Being Born."It’s about birth. It's about the politics of the medical system," Lake told TV Guide at Thursday (Oct. 25) night’s Choose Your Cause (CYC): Launch Party and Charity Benefit at Fred Segal Santa Monica."It raises a lot of questions about what is going on with birth today, with all the C-section rates and malpractice insurance and midwives. It looks at all of that from my own personal experience. It’s fascinating." Lake’s baby experience includes being mom to sons Milo, 10, and Owen, 6, (their father is Rob Sussman, Lake’s husband — the couple are currently separated).The documentary opens in New York on Jan. 9, 2008. Lake may return to regular TV work, too, and says, "I did a pilot and it might get picked up, but I did it for last season but now they held my options. I don’t know what’s happening at...
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Tom Cavanagh (Love Monkey, if you will) has been cast as Sheriff David Reichert, the lead investigator on the trail of the worst serial slayer America has seen, in Desperate: The Search for the Green River Killer, a Lifetime mini based on Reichert's true-crime book Chasing the Devil. Also on board are Amy Davidson (8 Simple Rules) and Sharon Lawrence.... Lifetime has also greenlit Matters of Life & Dating, a TV-movie starring Ricki Lake as a woman who resumes dating after surviving breast cancer. Holly Robinson Peete also stars. The pic bows Oct. 22, during Breast Cancer Awareness month.For truly Desperate (as in Housewives) casting news, see the Ausiello Report.
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Just as ABC extended its option on Football Wives, a few other initially passed-on fall pilots might see the airwaves after all. Per the Hollywood Reporter, ABC is also keeping a short leash on the comedies The Middle (Ricki Lake as blue-collar mom) and The Hill (set in D.C. and starring Michelle Trachtenberg and Wendie Malick).Fox, meanwhile, still may come calling for Nurses (a dramedy fronted by Eliza Dushku and Sara Rue) and/or The Cure (starring Oded Fehr and Anson Mount).
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Bye bye Rosie, hello Whoopi! TV Guide has learned from a source close to The View that Whoopi Goldberg is at the top of the wish list to fill one of the two empty seats on the chat show's depleted couch.The departing Rosie O'Donnell says she loves the Whoopster, as do current co-hosts Elisabeth "I hope I stay forever" Hasselbeck and Joy Behar. Whoopi would fit the bill quite nicely: She's outspoken, funny, a woman of color, and already lives in New York — and scored high on TV Guide.com’s recent poll of possible Rosie replacements. No word yet, though, on how her asking price compares to Rosie's $10 million. (Whoopi's rep had no comment.) Also on the chatfest’s dream team is Ricki Lake, but sources close to the actress/talk show host says she likes living in Los Angeles and has other projects in mind. — Reporting by Ileane Rudolph
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Geez, who had Stiffler pegged as the career feature-film star? But I get ahead of myself. The latest pilot-casting news from Variety and the Reporter:• CBS could soon be home to three American Pie stars. Jason Biggs is a Wall Street whiz who dies in a Blackberry-related car accident and, since Hades is full, is forced to endure "Hell on earth" (aka a life devoid of his fancy career, apartment and such) in I'm in Hell. Chris Klein, meanwhile, is the series lead's best buddy in The Captain, which has also added comic Al Madrigal as a janitor.• Ricki Lake is the mom in The Middle, ABC's comedy about a lower-middle-class family in the Midwest.• Michael McKean is a low-level congressman's chief of staff in ABC's The Thick of It.• Penn Badgley (John Tucker Must Die) has joined the CW's Gossip Girls.
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