Lena Dunham and her team have tapped two veterans of Chicago’s improv scene for a proposed HBO series following up on their hit “Girls.”
Edgar Blackmon | Second City photo
Rebecca Drysdale, who starred in two Second City e.t.c. revues about a decade ago, has been cast in the pilot for “Max” as an officemate of the title character, a magazine writer promoting women’s liberation in 1963, Deadline.com reports. And Edgar Blackmon, seen in three mainstage Second City shows in recent years, will play an office coffee boy.
They join another former Chicagoan, Lisa Joyce, cast earlier in the lead role of Maxine Woodruff. Joyce was a Jeff nominee in 2005 for playing an Amsterdam prostitute in Adam Rapp’s acclaimed “Red Light District” at Steppenwolf Theatre.
Also in the “Max” cast is screen legend Peter Fonda, playing the heroine’s father.
Dunham is producing the show along with three of her “Girls” colleagues: Murray Miller, Jenni Konner and Ilene Landress.
Rebecca Drysdale in Second City’s “From Fear to Eternity” in 2005. | Second City photo
The gig looks to be a good fit for Drysdale, also an accomplished comedy writer. She has a long history with Jordan Peele, a college friend and her partner in the ironically named duo Two White Guys, which performed at Chicago’s ImprovOlympic starting in 2000, and was a writer throughout the run of his Comedy Central series “Key & Peele.” In 2005 she brought a one-woman show to the the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., where she won an award as breakout performer.
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