Sarah Silverman might be headed back to television as a lead actress, and to add a little icing to the cake, she’s worked out a deal with premium cable channel HBO. This week we learned that Silverman has signed on for a half-hour comedy pilot at the cable network. The project is currently untitled, but it’ll star Silverman as a woman who is “pathologically honest” and who will be dealing with a midlife crisis at the start of the show.
Honestly, my first reaction to this is one of a little bit of shock that Silverman could be described as someone who is old enough to have a midlife crisis. I guess the actress has been on the scene since the early nineties, but her energetic personality makes her seem pretty spry for someone who is actually 44. So, midlife crisis it is. According to Deadline, Silverman won’t just be starring in the untitled pilot. She’ll also be executive producing the project over at HBO.
Joining Silverman in producing the project are Lucy Prebble, Ash Atalla, Amy Zvi and Dan Hine. Prebble formerly created the ITV drama Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which aired on Showtime in the US. Prebble will also be writing the script for the comedy pilot.
I honestly thought we would have seen Silverman on the small screen by this year. She was formerly attached to another HBO project called People in New Jersey, which would have starred herself and Topher Grace as two siblings living in—you guessed it—New Jersey. That one came from Girls’ Bruce Eric Caplan and Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels, so it had plenty of big players attached, but it didn’t end up moving forward.
Honestly, Silverman’s had trouble nabbing a starring TV gig since The Sarah Silverman Program went off the air in 2011. For a time, she was working on a project with Jon Schroeder and Dan Sterling. That project, Susan 313, did move forward at NBC, but didn’t get picked up to series. The she worked on Punching the Clown with Showtime and the aforementioned HBO project, which also didn’t land series orders.
Hopefully, Silverman will have a little luck with her currently untitled project. She has a history with HBO, having appeared in Mr. Show with Bob and David, The Larry Sanders Show and most recently a comedy special called Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles. It’s clear that HBO wants to give her a shot at a starring gig, once more, but we’ll have to see if the latest pitch is the right fit.
