Michaela McManus has been cast in NBC’s “REM” pilot, taking the role announced for “Terriers” veteran Laura Allen just last week.
Normally that would be bad news for Allen. Nobody likes to lose a part in a pilot.
This would be the exception, since Allen has been handed a different, more prominent role in the same pilot.
Written by Kyle Killen (“Lone Star”) and set to be showrun by Howard Gordon (“24”), “REM” focuses on a detective (Jason Isaacs) balancing two different realities. In one reality, he’s grieving and recovering from an accident in which his wife (Allen) died and his teenage son (Dylan Minnette) survived. But when he closes his eyes to sleep, he’s in a different reality in which the son died and his wife survived. But which reality is real? Well, he’s got a pair of shrinks to help him out with that one.
Allen was just cast in the “REM” pilot last week, playing Tara, tennis coach and possible surrogate mother to the teenage son in the reality in which that kind of thing makes sense. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the role will now be played by McManus, whose credits include “One Tree Hill” and a recent turn on “The Vampire Diaries.”
Cherry Jones, Dylan Minnette, Steve Harris, Wilmer Valderrama and B.D. Wong also star in the pilot.