If Phoebe from Friends were to exist on Scandal, I like to think she'd declare Fitz to be Olivia's lobster. If ever were were a will-they-wont-they couple in league with the likes of Ross and Rachel, it's Olivia Pope and President Fitzgerald. And while there's no Phoebe Buffay to announce official "lobster" status, the series will benefit from the talent of Lisa Kudrow in its upcoming third season.
If her character's name turns out to be Regina Falange, everyone wins in this situation.
In truth, details on Kudrow's Scandal role are slim right now. What Deadline does report is that Kudrow has been tapped to play a recurring role on the Shonda Rhimes drama, which is headed into its third season this fall. The site says that they only thing that's currently known about Kudrow's part is that she's playing a politician, which means she has something in common with a lot of the characters in the Washington, DC-set series.
Scandal centers on Kerry Washington's character Olivia Pope, a woman who makes her living cleaning up the messes of her high profile clientele. Of course, the scandals of the politicians she associates with occasionally pale by comparison to Pope's own deep dark secret, which is the romance she's involved in with President Fitzgerald (Tony Goldwyn). Kudrow's character could be a client in need of Pope's help, or she could be some form of opposition to Pope, the President or any one of the scandal-managing "gladiators" who work with Pope. Regardless, Kudrow's involvement in the series is a great bit of casting, especially for those of us who love Friends. And something tells me there's a fair amount of crossover between Friends and Scandal.
Since playing one of the stars in the ensemble comedy Friends, Kudrow has stuck mainly with comedies, starring as Valerie Cherish in HBO's excellent but unfortunately short-lived comedy The Comeback, and appearing in feature comedies Hotel for Dogs and Easy A. These days, she's starring as Fiona Wallice in Showtime's comedy series Web Therapy, and we'll see her in Nicholas Stoller's upcoming comedy Neighbors. She also executive produces the celebrity genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, which made a comeback over at TLC this year.
As Deadline points out, Kudrow's linked to Scandal through her Web Therapy co-producer Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Cyrus' husband James Novak in the ABC drama. Bucatinsky also played a recurring role on The Comeback as the motivated but occasionally aggressive publicist Billy Stanton.
Scandal returns for Season 3 on Thursday, October 3. We recently included the series as one of twelve great shows (three seasons and under) available on Netflix. Since then, Netflix has added Season 2 of the series, so if you're looking to get caught up on this must-watch drama before Season 3, you have more than a month to get it done!
