After being charged in the Operation Varsity Blues college bribery scandal and serving time for her participation, Felicity Huffman is set to make her return to acting with a new comedy series for ABC. The network has picked up a pilot for the show that’s reportedly inspired by the real-life story of Susan Savage, the owner of the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
The ABC comedy, meanwhile, will also star Zack Gottsagen (The Peanut Butter Falcon). It centers on Huffman’s character, who inherits her husband’s beloved minor league baseball team after his sudden death. She navigates her new life with the help of her dysfunctional family, including her eldest son (Gottsagen), a baseball devotee with Down syndrome, her new work family and the Sacramento community.
Huffman’s casting comes as a surprise even though it’s been over a year since she served time for committing mail fraud after she and other wealthy parents, including Fuller House‘s Lori Loughlin, were caught by federal investigators in the intricate scandal. (Loughlin is currently serving her sentence.) The guilty parties took part in a scam that faked their children’s SAT scores and extracurricular activities to get them into prestigious universities. However, unlike Loughlin, Huffman immediately cooperated with prosecutors and only served a 14-day sentence, which earned her scathing criticism from her Desperate Housewives co-star, Ricardo Chavira.
In a now-deleted tweet, Chavira wrote, “White Privilege. And I saw Eight years worth of it, so I know what I’m talking about. Accountability and Responsibility don’t mean sh*t to these people.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)