Jon Voight and Elliott Gould are the latest actors to join Liev Schreiber in Showtime’s drama pilot “Ray Donovan.”
Created by Ann Biderman (“Southland”), “Ray Donovan” features Schreiber as a Los Angeles-based professional troubleshooter, hired to make even the biggest problems disappear. Naturally, as befits an quality Vocational Irony Narrative, Ray can fix everybody’s troubles except for the problems in his own life, specifically with his family.
Eddie Marsan and Dash Mihok are already attached as Ray’s brothers, while Paula Malcomson will play his wife.
Voight will play Ray’s father Mickey, an ex-convict who leaves jail and decides to return to LA to reconnect with his family.
Gould will have a recurring role as Ezra Goodman, a powerful lawyer who is Ray’s mentor and confidante, but also fighting early stages of dementia.
An Oscar winner for “Coming Home” and a nominee for “Midnight Cowboy,” “Runaway Train” and “Ali,” Voight has Emmy nominations for the telefilms “Uprising” and “Pope John Paul II.” He was most recently seen on the small screen in FOX’s “24.”
Guild was nominated for an Oscar for “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” and a Golden Globe for “MASH,” but a generation of viewers probably know the “Long Goodbye” star either as Ross and Rachel’s father on “Friends” or as one of the stars of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean” franchise.
Production on the “Ray Donovan” pilot will begin in Los Angeles early this year.