Christina Ricci, Jaime King And Annie Potts Get Pilot Starring Roles

In her first major TV gig, Christina Ricci has closed a deal to star in ABC’s drama pilot Pan Am. The project, from Sony Pictures TV, writer Jack Orman and director Thomas Schlamme, is a sexy soap set against the Jet-Age about pilots and flight attendants working at the iconic Pan Am airline in the 1960s. Ricci, repped by ICM and Management 360, will play the lead, Maggie, a fiery stewardess who is leading a double life – on duty she is a beautiful, perfectly groomed and poised stewardess, and off duty she is earthy, bohemian living among the beatniks and intellectuals of Greenwich Village. Exec producing are Orman, Schlamme and producer Nancy Hult Ganis, a former Pan Am flight attendant.

Jaime King is set to co-star opposite Rachel Bilson in CW’s drama pilot Hart of Dixie. The project, from  writer Leila Gerstein, WBTV and Fake Empire, is a comedic drama centered on a young New York City doctor (Bilson) who inherits a medical practice in a small Southern town inhabited by an eclectic and eccentric group of characters. King, repped by Gersh and Raw Talent, will play a beautiful, overly effusive young woman, one of the elite “Blue Belles”, a group of southern debutante-types who keep the town history alive by performing in period dress.

Annie Potts has been tapped for a lead role in the ABC’s dramedy pilot Good Christian Bitches, from writer-exec producer Robert Harling and exec producer Darren Star. Based on Kim Gatlin’s book, it centers on Amanda, a recently divorced mother of two who moves back to the affluent Dallas neighborhood where she grew up to find herself in the whirling midst of gossip, Botox and fraud. Potts will play Amanda’s overbearing Dallas mother. Potts fielded 3 pilot offers this season before settling on Bitches. Additionally, she has been approached for a guest spot on CW’s Hart of Dixie. Potts, repped by Innovative and manager Craig Dorfman, is currently starring in Aftermath at  the Odyssey. She most recently appeared on Broadway in God of Carnage and is rumored for the upcoming Ghostbusters movie.