Once upon a time, if you were an actor you wanted movies, not TV. Film is where careers bloomed; television is where they died. That’s not true anymore, when movie stars like Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon are happily heading for the small screen. The latest? Harrison Ford, who, at age 77, is not only doing his first CGI dog movie but is also about to get his very first regular TV gig with the true crime series The Staircase.
This comes from Entertainment Weekly, who confirmed that the now-former Han Solo will play Michael Peterson, a novelist convicted in 2003 of murdering his wife. He has always professed his innocence, claiming she fell down the stairs and hit her head. The case has been previously covered in the French doc series of the same name, which ran in 2004 and received a sequel in 2014.
Yes, this means Harrison Ford will once again play a man claiming he did not kill his wife. But more importantly it will be the actor’s first narrative TV appearance since a 1993 episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which at that point had been his first foray into the medium since 1978’s notorious Star Wars Holiday Special.
Even in his pre-fame days he only did a moderate amount of television; die hard Fordologists can find him in stray episodes of The Mod Squad, The F.B.I., Gunsmoke, and Kung Fu. Surely the eternally grumpy Ford will be stoked to remember how working TV has much, much longer hours than working in the cinema.
(Via EW)
