‘The End Of The World As We Know It’: Quinta Brunson To Star In CW Pilot

In what might be one of the biggest discoveries this pilot casting season, digital content creator and star Quinta Brunson (Broke) has landed the co-lead opposite Gage Golightly in the CW’s comedic drama pilot The End of the World as We Know It, from Rob Thomas and Warner Bros TV.

Written by Powerless executive producers/showrunners Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, The End of the World as We Know It (formerly known as It’s The End of the World as We Know It) is based on the 2012 Alloy book by Iva-Marie Palmer. In the show, when a prison spaceship carrying the universe’s most deadly aliens crashes in Southern California, two millennial women — Kate (Golightly) and Ruby (Brunson), with bigger dreams than working at a kids’ pizza place in the Valley — are recruited by a space cop to hunt down the escaped criminals who have camouflaged themselves as eccentric Angelenos.

Brunson’s Ruby, a hyper-intelligent, upbeat graduate from MIT, hasn’t been able to hold down an engineering job due to her interests shifting a mile a minute. Therefore, she currently works at her parents’ business, a birthday party place/pizza restaurant for kids. But with the arrival of a crashed spaceship, Ruby finally might have found her mission.

Halpern and Schumacker executive produce via their Ehsugadee Productions with Veronica Mars creator Thomas and his frequent collaborators Danielle Stokdyk and Dan Etheridge via Spondoolie Productions as well as Alloy Entertainment’s Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo.

This marks the first traditional-medium role for writer, director and actor Brunson, formerly of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, who got her start with viral Instagram series The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date. She went on to create and star in the scripted comedy series Broke on YouTube Red. Branson, who also has a stand-up background, wrote and executive produced workplace comedy Up for Adoption for Verizon’s go90 and most recently Quinta vs. Everything on Facebook Watch. Brunson is repped by ICM Partners, Generate, Foundry Media and AltView Law Group.