Joan Rivers was a pop culture icon for over fifty years and she is undoubtedly an extremely difficult role to fill in Showtime's upcoming limited series The Comeback Girl. Who could capture the humor and gravitas that made Joan Rivers a larger-than-life personality for so many years? Well, Variety has reported that Kathryn Hahn has been cast to fill those shoes and bring the iconic comedian to life in the new series.
The news comes off the heels of this year's Emmys, where Hahn was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Limited Or Anthology Series Or Movie for her work as Agatha Harkness in Marvel's WandaVision.
Greg Berlanti is set to direct and executive produce The Comeback Girl alongside Hahn and Cosmo Carlson, who has been pinned to write the series. Carlson is a two-time Black List screenwriter who initially wrote The Comeback Girl as a spec script. The script caught the attention of Richard Suckle and Robert Amidon's Atlas Entertainment, which brought in Berlanti Productions' Berlanti and Sarah Schechter to produce.
The logline gives a great look into how the series aims to approach Rivers' legacy:
Trailblazer. Adored. Cruel. Diva. Joan Rivers had a life like no other. At age 54, she was a superstar comedienne…and then it all fell apart. The Comeback Girl is the awe-inspiring untold story of how Joan Rivers persevered through near suicide and professional abyss to rebuild herself and her career to become a global icon.
Joan Rivers' career launched in the 1950s, performing at a number of iconic Greenwich Village comedy clubs like The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe. Through the sixties and seventies, she became a staple on late-night talk shows and variety shows. In the late eighties, she landed her own daytime show — The Joan Rivers Show — which ran for five seasons. From the fifties up until the mid-2010s, she was everywhere.
Rivers died in 2014 following complications during a minor outpatient throat procedure. Prior to her death, Rivers was the co-host of E!'s Fashion Police alongside Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne, and George Kotsiopoulos. Her final episode covered the fashion dos and don'ts at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards.
Showtime has not yet set a release date for The Comeback Girl, so stay tuned to Collider for more news about this project.