Our favorite characters from The Office have been gone from our screens for three years, now, and while we may miss them, the actors who helped bring those characters to life have started to move on. Now, Rainn Wilson, who perfectly embodied the weirdness that was Dwight Schrute, finally has his next television role.
A report from Deadline states that Rainn Wilson will have a recurring role on the new, hour long Showtime comedy Roadies. The series comes from the mind of Cameron Crowe, the man behind Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire.
Since NBC’s The Office ended its run in 2013, Rainn Wilson has only appeared in little more than a handful of projects. He’s voiced characters in The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange and Adventure Time, and made appearances in small films like The Stream, Cooties, Uncanny and The Boy. Last year he led the police procedural Backstrom on FOX, but the series was not picked up for a second season. He currently has three films in post-production and is recording his part of Gargamel for Smurfs: The Lost Village.
For those who are uninitiated to the term “roadie,” this is someone who works for a band while they’re on tour to help set up and maintain all of the equipment needed for taking a band on the road and performing concerts. The Showtime comedy Roadies will give audiences an insider’s look into the world of a committed group of roadies who live for rock music and the family that they’ve made of one another along the way. The show will center on Bill (Luke Wilson) and Shelli (Carla Gugino), who are the manager and production manager, respectively, of the (imaginary) arena-rock band, The Staton-House Band. The show is told from the point of view of the behind-the-scenes personnel who help to make sure each show goes smoothly, without anyone in the crowd ever knowing who they are or how important their roles are to the concerts.
In the 10 episodes of Season 1, Rainn Wilson will be seen as an overly self-important, but famous, music journalist named Bryce Newman, who will likely be following the band’s progress during their concert tour. Wilson will join a cast that’s already filled with well-known names. Including Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino, the show has also added Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Peter Cambor, Colson Baker (known as rapper Machine Gun Kelly) and comedian Ron White to the ensemble.
Cameron Crowe wrote the pilot and will be directing it as well. Showrunner Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life) is executive producing alongside J.J. Abrams and some of his Bad Robot cohorts.
So, is Roadies already bringing back feel-good memories of Crowe’s Almost Famous for you? If so, you’ll want to tune in when the series debts on Showtime sometime later this year.
