Day: July 6, 2011

NBC announced today that James Spader will join the cast of The Office this fall as a full-time regular, but not for the job he auditioned for — instead of replacing Steve Carell as office manager at Dunder-Mifflin, Spader's "Robert California" will replace Kathy Bates as CEO of Sabre, the paper company's corporate parent. Said Paul Lieberstein, an executive producer on the show who also plays HR man Toby:  "James will reprise his role as Robert California, this uber-salesman that has a power to convince and manipulate, like a high-class weirdo Jedi warrior. He'll have been hired over the summer as the new manager, but within hours, got himself promoted. Within days, he took over the company. James has an energy that is completely his own, and 'The Office' has no tools for dealing with this guy. We're thrilled he's joining our cast." You can see part of Spader's unofficial official job interview with Toby and the search committee in this recap from the season finale:...

In case you missed it, sometime before the holiday weekend, NBC decided to recast three of its supporting roles on the 2012 midseason sitcom, Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea, based on one of Chelsea Handler's best-selling books. One of the people losing out was stand-up comedian Jo Koy, a regular member of Handler's late-night roundtable on her E! series, Chelsea Lately. A spokesperson told Michael Ausiello the cast changes had been made for "creative reasons." But a few comedians (you know how comics talk) already had put out word that for Koy, the creative reason allegedly was the network's response to Koy calling an audience member a "fucking faggot" during his June 15 show at Just For Laughs Chicago. Neither NBC nor Koy has said there was a direct link. (Updated!) In fact, I have it on good authority that NBC already was looking to recast Koy's bartender role with someone who could develop more potential sexual tension with Laura Prepon's lead character as a younger Chelsea, and they had until June 30 to make that decision. And Koy apologized the following day for his brief outburst via Twitter, saying: "Homophobia is not funny." Did Handler get that memo? On Monday night's episode of Chelsea Lately, neither Handler nor Koy brought up their NBC split. Handler did return to her long-running roast of Koy by joking that he's...