casting

Kathryn Hahn Will Be TV’s Latest Goyish Joan Rivers

[Singing] She was Catholic all along! Photo: Rich Fury/Getty Images

Between Hacks, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and now this latest project, Hollywood has one requirement for actresses playing a version of Joan Rivers: Don’t actually be Jewish. Per Variety, Kathryn Hahn (raised Catholic but did play a rabbi on Transparent) will star in and executive-produce a Showtime limited series about Rivers’s career, The Comeback Girl. Greg Berlanti, who is everywhere, has somehow found the time to direct and executive-produce the project, while Cosmo Carlson is writing and executive-producing it. The show is “set in the aftermath of the cancellation of The Late Show,” the talk show she headlined, and the death by suicide of her husband Edgar Rosenberg. Those are events that are also riffed on in the backstory of Jean Smart’s character in Hacks, so, really, this feels like the beginning of a Showtime–HBO Max feud. Bring it on! Every network should have its own Joan Rivers project with which to compete at the Emmys — though at some point, they really should cast a Jewish woman to play her.

Kathryn Hahn Is TV’s Latest Goyish Joan Rivers