After being away from television since 2012, Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester has found her next regular TV role. The actress is working on a time travel themed show for FOX.
As reported by TVLine, Leighton Meester has signed on as the female lead in the FOX pilot Making History. The comedy will focus on three friends who have discovered a way to travel through time, and do so, looking for fun, adventure and any financial gain they can get from their travels. In the process the trio manages to complicate their lives in the present day, visit some of the biggest moments in history and try to solve their own problems, all while pop culture and history collide in humorous ways. Adam Pally (Happy Endings and The Mindy Project) also stars.
Leighton Meester’s character, Deborah, is a woman who lives in the late 1700’s and is a smart, motivated pioneer, who just so happens to have very modern ideas about women’s roles in society and racial equality. This, of course, leads her to be a bit of an outcast in her own time but makes her sensibilities perfectly in line with someone from 2016.
Meester got her start on Law & Order in 1999, and went on to appear in Boston Public, a Tarzan reboot, 7th Heaven, 24, Veronica Mars, House M.D. and CSI: Miami, among other shows, before landing the part of Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl in 2007. Since then she’s made movies, like Life Partners and The Judge.
It’s hard to think of Leighton Meester and not remember Gossip Girl. The CW’s teen soap opera, based on the book series of the same name, focused on the lives of New York’s privileged Upper East Side youths. As Constance Saint Jude prep school’s social queen bee, Meester’s portrayal garnered the most attention of any on the show. A Yahoo! review noted that she helped Blair enter “television's pantheon of razor-witted, solipsistic high school Alpha females.” She helped to mold a memorable character who was a true love-to-hate-her high school predator.
The show is being executive produced by the team behind Last Man on Earth, Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The duo was also behind 21 Jump Street and its sequel, plus Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the it-shouldn’t-have-worked-but-it-did film The Lego Movie, and is also working on the upcoming Star Wars Han Solo movie. If this project is anything like Last Man on Earth or The Lego Movie, the show will be filled with odd humor, weird coincidences and unexpected heart.
Making History already sounds like it could be one of the most interesting comedies to come along in years. If FOX decides to pick the pilot up as a series, I predict some intense belly laughs will come from the audience before long.
