TV News Wrap-Up: Remembering Glee’s Naya Rivera, Peacock Sets ‘A.P. Bio’ Return Date, Aisha Dee Calls For Diversity Behind the Scenes

Well, it’s definitely been a week, hasn’t it? Between Nick Cannon’s anti-Semitic remarks, the Twitter Bitcoin hack, and Naya Rivera’s body being found, it’s been a wild ride. 

It isn’t made any easier when you consider that with no substantive production plan in place, networks are beginning to have to make agile changes to their schedules. 

Here are the highlights (and lowlights) from this week in TV news. 

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Former Glee actress, Naya Rivera was found dead after a six-day search of Lake Piru, CA. 

• Rivera went missing after she and her 4-year-old son went swimming after renting a pontoon boat on Lake Piru, CA. 
• Rivera was able to get her son back into the boat before slipping under the surface, a CNN report states, “The child told rescuers he and his mother had gone into the water to swim, but she did not get back on the boat. He told investigators he then looked back and saw her disappear under the surface of the water.”
• The child was found sleeping in the boat when it was overdue to return. He was wearing a lifejacket and another was found with him. 
• Rivera was found on the northeast corner of the lake where the water is between 35 and 60 feet deep and was identified through dental records.
• Rivera played Santana Lopez on the 2009 musical comedy series Glee. The Washington Post reflected on how Santana went from being just a mean girl to a trailblazing character for diverse LGBTQ+ representation on television. 
• Sonia Rao writers for The Washington Post, “Rivera’s versatility as an actress matched that of her robust voice, which she lent to Fleetwood Mac covers as easily as she did a cello-backed cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ and multiple Amy Winehouse hits, including the sultry ‘Back to Black’ and upbeat ‘Valerie.’ She and co-star Amber Riley, who played Mercedes Jones, made a powerhouse duo and frequently joined forces for performances such as the Adele mash-up and, among others, Ike and Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High.'”
• Former Glee cast members have looked back on their time with Rivera including Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer, as well as Heather Morris, of her fondly, and NPR posted a retrospective on her legacy for LGBT People of Color.

An In Treatment reboot is under consideration at HBO.

• According to The Hollywood Reporter, the cabler is eyeing a return of the psychotherapist centered series that originally ran from 2008-2010. 
• The series was filmed with only two actors, Gabriel Byrne’s Dr. Paul Weston and one of his patients.
• With a limited cast, it’s not hard to see how filming such a show would conform to new pandemic production guidelines. Nor would it be a stretch for the show to be filmed remotely. 
• The series aired multiple half-hour episodes each week with Dr. Paul Weston meeting several patients. Actors who made appearances as patients included Blair Underwood, Melissa George, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Charles, Hope Davis, Alison Pill, Embeth Davidtz, Sherri Saum, Russell Hornsby, Aaron Shaw, John Mahoney, Irrfan Khan, Debra Winger, Amy Ryan, Dane DeHaan, and Alex Wolff.
• No showrunner or writer is attached to the reboot yet.

Briarpatch has been canceled by USA Network after one season.

• Deadline reports that showrunner Andy Greenwald called the cancellation of the freshman series a “bummer.”
• Greenwald added, “I am so fortunate. We got to tell our entire story, beginning to end, just as we intended. We got to finish production and post-production before this awful pandemic hit, shutting down our industry and so much else in the world. We got real giraffes.”
• Greenwald also revealed that he signed a new deal with UCP and said he has “[a] bunch of pots on a number of burners”.
• He also encouraged people to check out the show on-demand, stating: “anything’s possible – especially for an anthology series as weird as this one”.

Peacock has set a return date A.P Bio and acquired Archie Panjabi’s Departure.

• TVLine reports that the un-canceled A.P. Bio will premiere it’s third season on Peacock starting Thursday, September 3rd with all eight episodes dropping at once.  
• Peacock also announced that it has acquired Archie Penjabi’s Departure. 
• The Canadian series features The Good Wife‘s Archie Panjabi as an investigator opposite her mentor Christopher Plummer. The pair look into a vanishing plane as outside forces undermine their work.
• Peacock also added the UK comedy Hitmen (to premiere August 6th) and Australian dramedy Five Bedrooms (to premiere August 13th)

Nyle DiMarco is developing a comedy about a deaf man at Spectrum. 

• The series will star DiMarco, model, and actor, and former winner of America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars and is described as an “irreverent comedy centered around his experiences as a charismatic, smart deaf man in modern times. The episodes look to offer funny, character-based storytelling designed to provide a deeper perspective on the experiences of the deaf and hard of hearing communities in America.”
• While DiMarco is known for his reality TV appearances he’s also appeared on Switched at Birth, Station 19, and Difficult People. 
• Deadline reports that the Charter-backed platform has enlisted Daniel Dae Kim’s 3AD as the production company. 

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos projects that coronavirus filming precautions will become a permanent part of production. 

• According to Deadline, in a Q2 earnings videoconference, Sarandos said, “I think the safety protocols will become a permanent part of production, which is a good thing.”
• Sarandos also said that the streamer is ramping up various stages of pre-production around the globe. “Even during the shutdown we are partially shot on a lot of shows, so when we can pick up them back up it’s not like starting from scratch again.”
• Sarandos also let slip that one of the streamers projects will spend a few days shooting in Los Angeles this week. 
• This comes as coronavirus cases surge in the United States, with the state of California heading towards another shutdown. 

Samara Weaving has joined Hulu’s limited series, Nine Perfect Strangers.

• Weaving joins Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy.
• She will play one of the nine “perfect” strangers. 
• According to Deadline, “Nine Perfect Strangers the series takes place at a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation as nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living. Watching over them during this ten-day retreat is the resort’s director Masha (Kidman), a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies.
• Her previous roles include Robert Schwentke’s Snake Eyes and Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Hollywood. 

USA Network has scrapped an Evel Knievel Limited Series starring Milo Ventimiglia.

• Deadline reports, “With Ventimiglia’s window of availability closing, no definitive path to production restart in the U.S. amid a surge of new COVID-19 infections, which makes syncing up everyone’s schedules a daunting proposition, a decision was made not to proceed with the series at USA.”
• The project was meant to film during Ventimiglia’s hiatus from NBC’s This Is Us.
• The project was fully cast and staffed, but production was forced to shut down on March 13th amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• UCP will be shopping the project around with Ventimiglia still attached. Ventimiglia has been on-board since day one. 
• Evel is described as, “…the story of Evel Knievel (Ventimiglia) as he prepares for his greatest death-defying feat — the historic Snake River Canyon jump. Evel is an exhilarating portrait of a complex man living the American dream, juggling meteoric celebrity and raising a family — and facing the very real probability that his next jump will kill him.”
• Evel is the first of many projects slated for summer production that is likely to be canceled this year.

Aisha Dee calls out The Bold Type‘s lack of diversity behind the camera. 

• Dee, who plays Kat Edison on the Freeform drama, took her social media expressing her concerns about the lack of diversity in the production team. 
• “The diversity we see in front of the camera needs to be reflected in the diversity of the creative team behind the camera,” writes Dee in a lengthy Instagram post. 
• Dee reveals that over the show’s 48 episodes only one Black woman was hired as a director for two episodes and that it took three seasons for the hair department to hire someone who knew how to work with textured hair. 
• She also stated that it took two seasons to hire a BIPOC writer and that they wrote a Black woman and lesbian Muslim storyline without a Black queer or Muslim writer in the room.
• The Hollywood Reporter cites that a spokesperson for the show clarified some of Dee’s claims about the writer’s room.

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What is your favorite bit of TV news from this week? Let us know in the comments below.

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