Victoria Mahoney To Direct CBS Drama Pilot ‘Under the Bridge’

EXCLUSIVE: After making history as as the first African-American woman to direct a Star Wars film with her second unit directing gig on JJ Abrams’ Star Wars Episode IX, Vic Mahoney is returning to TV as director and executive producer on the CBS medical drama pilot Under the Bridge. The project, which recently cast David Ajala as a lead, hails from Mistresses executive producer Rina Mimoun and Jerry Bruckheimer TV.

In Under the Bridge, penned by Mimoun, when a scandal rocks the medical practice she runs with her husband and their friends, a surgeon rises to the occasion and takes the lead in trying to mend both the practice and her own marriage

Mahoney will executive produce alongside Mimoun and JBTV’s Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and KristieAnne Reed.

Mahoney just wrapped her Star Wars second unit directing stint last week. Before she embarked on the big movie assignment, Mahoney made her pilot directing debut last spring with another CBS drama, The Red Line, from producers Greg Berlanti and Ava DuVernay. The pilot, starring Noah Wyle, went to series, which premieres April 28.

Mahoney recently was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Directing on Veena Sud’s Netflix series Seven Seconds and also directed two episodes of Patty Jenkins’ TNT limited series I Am the Night starring Chris Pine.

Mahoney, who started her television career directing an episode of DuVernay’s Queen Sugar, is adapting Octavia Butler’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel Dawn, which she will exec produce alongside DuVernay, and Macro. Mahoney is repped by  Verve and attorney Nina Shaw.