PILOT CASTINGS: ‘Wendell & Vinnie’ Finds Lead, ‘Mockingbird Lane’ Gets Guest Star

Buddy Handleson (Shake It Up) has landed the young lead opposite Jerry Trainor in the Nick at Nite comedy pilot Wendell & Vinnie. The multi-camera project, created by Emmy-winning writer-producer Jay Kogen (Frasier), centers on as Vinnie (Trainor), an irresponsible goofball who becomes the guardian to his conservative genius 12-year old nephew Wendell (Handelson). Kogen is executive producing the pilot with Aaron Kaplan. 

Cheyenne Jackson (30 Rock) is set for a guest starring role in NBC’s Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane. Written by Bryan Fuller and to be directed by Bryan Singer, the pilot is described as a reinvention of the 1960s sitcom about The Munsters, a family of “monsters” — vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein, and their “plain” cousin (Charity Wakefield). Jerry O’Connell plays family patriarch Herman Munster, who is married to Lily (Portia de Rossi), a vampire, with whom he has fathered a 10-year-old boy, Eddie (Mason Cook). Eddie Izzard plays Grandpa. Jackson will play Scout Master Steve, Eddie’s charming, cheerful new Scout Master, a widower with no children of his own who becomes smitten with Lily. Jackson, repped by ICM and the Schiff Co., also just booked a role in Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic for HBO Behind the Candelabra as Jerry O’Rourke, Liberace’s former lover and right-hand man on stage. He currently appears in the feature Lola Versus.