(Pilot) Casting updates: Mary Steenburgen, Battlestar Galactica and more

Busy times continue for the industry, as everybody is shaping up to both end this season and start the next one. While most supporting actors hope for a lead in pilot season, others are just grateful they get a recurring spot. It's the endless circle of TV, and here's the latest...

• Another veteran of the cult-hit Battlestar Galactica landed a role on a new series. After Katee Sackhoff joined 24 and Grace Park signed on for CBS' Hawaii Five-O remake, it's now James Callis' turn to return to Sci-fi (or Syfy, if you wish). Callis is about to join the cast of Syfy's Eureka. Best known for his role as Dr. Gaius Baltar, Callis will now appear as Dr. Grant on the upcoming fourth season about the small little town full of nutty professors. Dr. Grant is a former resident of Eureka and now returns to shake things up and one of those things happens to be Allison Blake's romantic lovelife, causing friction with Sheriff Jack Carter. Eureka is slated to return July 9th.

• Marsha Thomason is coming back to White Collar in it's second season. Thomason, who starred in Las Vegas and appeared on Lost, played FBI agent Diana Lancing in the show's pilot, but was then replaced by Natalie Morales' character. For the second season, Morales will be leaving and Thomason will come back.
  
  
• Billy Brown has been added to FX's new drama series Lights Out as a regular. Brown, who most recently was seen in 'Star Trek', will play Raymond Reynolds, the current heavyweight champion and longtime rival of the main character, Patrick Leary.
  
  
• Gregg Henry is promoted to series regular on HBO's comedy Hung. The show centers around the well endowed high school basketball coach Ray who moonlights as a male prostitute. In it's first season, Henry played Ray's assistant coach.
  
  
• Colm Feore is about to sign a deal to co-star opposite Jeremy Irons on Showtime's upcoming drama series The Borgias. Set in 1492 Italy, the show focuses on a powerful crime family headed by Rodrigo Borgia. Feore, who recently recurred on 24, would play the role of Borgia's nemesis, Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere.
  
  
• Mary Steenburgen has been cast in ABC's comedy pilot Southern Discomfort. The show centers on a father whose life is turned upside down when his grown kids move back in with him. Steenburgen will play his wife.
  
  
• Carly Pope and David Ramsey are set to star opposite Jimmy Smits in NBC's untitled John Eisendrath drama pilot. Ramsey will play Smits best friend since childhood.
  
  
• Ian Reed Kessler landed a lead on NBC's comedy Friends With Benefits as an oversexed womanizer.
  
  
• Lindsey Broad has signed on ABC's comedy pilot Who Gets The Parents? in which she'll play one of the adult children of a divorcing couple who were married for 30 years.
  
  
• Kerri Reno 911 Kenney joins FOX's Tax Man as a human resources rep.
  
  
• Xander Berkely has been added to CW's Nikita as the Machiavellian leader of the show's main star.
  
  
• Odette Yustman is set as the female lead on FOX's untitled Adam Goldberg comedy pilot. The single-camera comedy, directed by Seth Gordon, revolves around twentysomething geniuses who crack security systems. Yustman, who starred on October Road, will play a member of the team and an expert in safe cracking and demolition.
  

That's a wrap folks. Happy with the new additions? Glad to see the Battlestar-cast back to work? Getting more interested in the reboots? Just glad to see Steenburgen on the small screen again? I'm all of the above.

Pilot casting updates: How I Met My Daughters

As the castings continue actors who appear only in secondary or returning roles hope to catch a lead in one of the 80-something pilots that have been ordered for fall season. And today, there are two famous well known TV daughters making their way to a lead. Oh, they grow up so fast.

Elisha Cuthbert, who's best known for her role as daughter of Jack Bauer on 24 (and of course 'The Girl Next Door'), will star on ABC's comedy pilot Happy Endings. Cuthbert will play a bride who, after breaking up with her groom at the altar, must figure out how to maintain relationships with their group of friends.

Second, Lyndsy Fonseca who perfected surprised, grossed out or shocked looks as Ted's future daughter on How I Met Your Mother will co-star opposite Maggie Q in The CW's Nikita.

Off-topic, Will Sasso and Stephanie Lemelin joined CBS' twitter-show Sh*t My Dad Says while Traylor Howard has been cast as the female lead on an untitled comedy pilot for ABC. Maria Thayer, Laureen Weedman and Mahaley Hessam have been cast in Larry Charles' NBC comedy pilot Our Show. James Frain has landed a lead in NBC's drama The Cape. Stephen Rea has boarded CBS's drama Chaos while David Gallagher joined CW's Betwixt. Sonja Sohn joins ABC's Body Of Evidence and Raoul Trujillo has been cast in ABC's Edgar Floats.

Pilot casting updates: Keri Russell's return to small screen and more

Keri Russell is coming back to a small screen near you, at least, that's the latest from Michael Aussiello who reports that Russell is in talks to play Will Arnett's love interest in the comedy pilot Wilde Kingdom.

Russell, who starred as the titular herione in Felicity, put her focus more on a movie career in recent years. Now, she might come to FOX, joining Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and already signed lead Will Arnett.

Kingdom revolves around Steve Wilde (Arnett), a wealthy, self-centered Beverly Hills playboy who falls for a selfless humanitarian (Russell).

In other exciting casting news:

• Judy Greer has been tapped to star opposite David Krumholtz in FOX's comedy pilot Tax Man.
• Jerry O'Connell gives TV another try opposite Jim Belushi in the CBS pilot Defenders
• Jason 'American Pie' Biggs takes the lead in CBS' comedy pilot True Love
• Madchen Amick has joined FOX drama Pleading Guilty
• Brooke Bloom and Vanessa Minnillo have been added to NBC's comedy This Little Piggy
• Anna Chlumsky scored a lead in CBS' drama Quinn-Tuplets
• Melinda "Julie Cooper" Clarke joins Aaron Stanford in CW's Nikita
• Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Hayes MacArthur have come aboard NBC's pilot Perfect Couples
• Debra Jo Rupp boarded ABC's untitled Shana Goldberg-Meehan comedy pilot
• Jay Hernandez and Michael Beach have been cast in CBS' untitled medical drama pilot
• Jimmy Smits signs on to an untitled legal drama pilot for NBC, not just as a star but also as an executive producer

Any shows get way, way more interesting (Nikita perhaps)? Excited Russell is coming back to the small screen?

Pilot casting updates: Heroes, Burn Notice

It's casting season and many, many actors are incredibly lucky to find a spot for the tuns of pilots that networks are looking at to pick up for next fall. Some are stolen away from currently airing shows, thereby questioning that show's faith (does Adam Scott's departure mean the end for Party Down?), others haven't been on the air for a while and are making a big return, at least, they hope so. In case you've been living under a rock, examining creatures on the bottom of the ocean or just simply had a life, here are the casting updates you missed.

• Kyle "Worst Week" Bornheimer has been tapped for a role in an untitled comedy pilot for CBS. The multicamera series is penned by How I Met Your Mother's Carter Bays and Craig Thomas
• Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer have landed lead roles in TBS' hourlong comedy pilot Franklin and Bash about two street lawyers who are recruited by a top-ranking law firm
• Rob Morrow (Numb3rs) proves this Friday's episode will be a series finale by moving on to ABC's Bruckheimer legal drama The Whole Truth
• Coby Bell (The Game) joins Burn Notice as a series regular in season 4. Bell will play Jesse Garcia, a cocky, smooth and sexy counter intelligence expert
• Tom Cavanagh landed the title role in the ABC pilot Edgar Floats. Cavangh will star as a police psychologist who moonlights as a bounty hunter
• Sendhil Ramamurthy, better known as Mohinder from Heroes joins Piper Perabo, Christopher Gorham and Peter Gallagher in the USA drama Covert Affairs
• Dania Ramirez, another Heroes grad, got a recurring role on Entourage
• Lennie James has been added to the HBO comedy Hung as a recurring role for it's second season
• Kevin Johnson landed a recurring role on FX's Sons Of Anarchy
• Felicia Day (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) will star in Red, Syfy's reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood story, in which she'll be a werewolf-hunting descendent of the little innocent girl with the red hood
• Kevin Dunn will co-star on HBO's Luck alongside Kerry Condon and Tom Payne, playing a prodigious masanthrope who is the ringmaster of a syndicate of misfits
• Nick Nolte is in talks for the horse drama on HBO that already has Dustin Hoffman as a star
• Brittany Snow landed the lead on David E. Kelley's NBC dramedy pilot Kindreds, a show that follows a curmudgeonly former patent lawyer and her group of misfit associates at a storefront law firm. Snow will play her assistant
• Sarah Wynter joins ABC's dramedy pilot Cutthroat as a Hollywood mom whose life is in shambles
• Gabourey Sidibe, recent Oscar nominee for her titlerole in 'Precious', signed on to Showtime's new series The Big C as a recurring guest star. She will play a student in Laura Linney's lead role's class

That's a wrap folks. A lot of big names joined new shows or currently running shows. Are you getting hyped up for summer/fall yet? Or are you worried that your favorite show might be canceled now it's stars are getting secundary contracts?

Pilot casting updates: Pleading Guilty, Episodes and more..

It's a busy time for guest stars or recurring stars on hit shows these days. Not because their roles are being expanded, but because if you're face is on TV right now, you have a bigger chance to land a lead in one of the many pilots that are casting for fall season. Here are the latest additions to the pilots of 2010...

After eight offers this season alone, the U.S. finally nabbed British actor Jason Isaacs (Brotherhood and the 'Harry Potter' movies) who will play the lead in the upcoming Fox drama Pleading Guilty which will be a legal thriller about embezzlement, bookmaking, offshore banking and the politics of a high-powered law firm. The show centers on Mack (Isaacs), a cop-turned-attorney described as "a big handsome Irish lunk" who is assigned to investigate the disappearance of the firm's star litigator. The show is based on Scott Turow's book of the same name.

Matt LeBlanc won't have to play in the Showtime/BBC comedy series alone, now that Claire Forlani, Kathleen Rose Perkins and Stephen Mangan have signed on to the project. Episodesrevolves around a succesful British couple who'll have their hit sitcom brought to the U.S. and who will quickly learn the ups and downs of Hollywood. Forlani and Mangan will play the husband and wife, while Perkins will play the head of programming of the network. LeBlanc previously signed on to play the lead actor of the fake-comedy. Production will start early May.

Emmy-winner Michael Imperioli has signed on for the lead in ABC's 187 Detroit which will take a humorous look at Detroit's top homicide division as seen through the cameras of a fictitious documentary crew.

In shorter news:

• Jon Seda, who will play in The Pacific, has been cast opposite Roselyn Sanchez in ABC's drama Cutthroat.
• Lindsay Price has been cast as a lead in ABC's comedy Who Gets The Parents?
• Eliza Coupe (Scrubs) will co-star on the networks comedy Happy Endings. The role will be secondary to her work on Scrubs.
• Jesse Bradford had joines NBC's untitled John Eisendrath drama
• Jason Behr and Merle Dandridge have been added to ABC"s drama The Matadors
• Missi Pyle and Johnny Sneed have landed leads on ABC's How To Be A Better American
• Diedrich Bader and Jessica Gower have been cast on NBC's comedy Outsourced

That's it for now, but guaranteed more pilot casting updates follow later.

Julie Benz acquires super powers

Julie Benz, former Dexter star who is now recurring on Desperate Housewives as stripper Robin, has landed a lead role on the new ABC drama pilot No Ordinary Life.

The new show, which is slated for fall season, centers around a typical American family, only, with super powers. Previously, Michael Chiklis from The Shield already signed on to play Jim, a former artist-turned-police artist with special abilities. Benz will play his wife, a scientist with a power for super speed.

No Ordinary Family comes from Greg Berlanti, the man behind Brothers & Sisters, Eli Stone and Dirty Sexy Money.

Katharine McPhee finds home in Pink House

Katherine McPhee scored a leading role in NBC's upcoming fall drama Pink House, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The pilot, from producers Scott Stuber, Rick Wiener and Kenny Schwartz follows Midwesterners who move to L.A. McPhee will play Emily, a down-to-Earth pharmaceutical rep.

McPhee also played in the movie 'The House Bunny' and had a guest-spot on CSI: NY.

Nip/Tuck-ers find new home, Eric Close is Chaos

The series finale of the cable show Nip/Tuck hasn't even aired yet, but two of the show's stars already found new projects to keep themselves busy with when the new season arrives.

Janeane Garofalo joins the new UMD

Janeane Garofalo has been cast as the chief nurse of CBS' Untitled Medical Drama, Michael Ausiello reports today.

The new fall show from producer John Wells revolves around a team of medical professionals who travel across the U.S. helping those in need.

Dermot Mulroney investigates the Rockford Files

NBC has cast Dermot Mulroney for the lead of the new series Rockford Files, Michael Aussiello confirmed today.

Mulroney will play the detective Jim Rockford in the reboot of the '74 crime drama. David Shore will produce the new show that will air in the fall as a part of the new NBC season.

This is the first lead role for Mulroney who previously voiced the Green Lantern for The Batman animation series and guest starred on Friends.