Jane the Virgin alum Gina Rodriguez has nabbed the lead role in the ABC comedy pilot, our sister site Variety reports. She’ll play Nell Stevens, who the potential series’ official logline says is “broke, newly single and feeling old” and “a self-described 40-something disaster.” When she decides to get back into the career she left a decade earlier, she takes the only job available to her: obituary writer. In this new role, “Nell starts getting life advice from an unlikely source.”
The single-camera series is based on Alexandra Potter’s novel Confessions of a Fortysomething F–k-up and hails from Casey Jonson and David Windsor, who’ll serve as writers and executive producers. Other EPs include McG, Mary Viola and Corey Marsh. 20th Television will produce the project.
Born and raised in Chicago, Gina Rodriguez began her career in 2003 in theater productions and made her screen debut in an episode of the police procedural drama series Law & Order. Gina’s breakthrough came in 2012, in the independent musical-drama film Filly Brown. She has gone on to star in such films as Deepwater Horizon (2016), Ferdinand (2017), Annihilation (2018), Miss Bala (2019), Someone Great (2019) and Scoob! (2020). She also voiced the titular character of the Netflix animated action-adventure series Carmen Sandiego.
Rodriguez is best known for playing the title role in The CW’s Jane the Virgin. Her other TV gigs include Diary of a Future President, Big Mouth, Carmen Sandiego and Elena of Avalor.
In addition to Not Dead Yet, ABC currently has two other single-camera comedies in the pilot mix: The Son-in-Law (starring Orange Is the New Black‘s Reema Sampat and This Is Us‘ Chris Sullivan) and Josep (starring stand-up comedian Jo Koy and Broadway star Rory O’Malley).
