How I Met Your Dad has cast its lead: indie-film actress/writer Greta Gerwig, star of such films as Greenberg and Frances Ha, which she also co-wrote.
As reported by Deadline, Gerwig has signed on as star and producer of the How I Met Your Mother spinoff, and is expected to write on the series as well.
Deadline also reports that CBS executives were so keen to land indie darling Gerwig on this anticipated project that the studio agreed to move production from L.A. to New York just to accommodate her, equating the network’s “courtship”; of the actress to Fox enticing Zooey Deschanel to take the lead role in New Girl three years ago.
The spinoff, from exec producer Emily Spivey (Up All Night) and HIMYM co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, will tell a similar story but from a female point of view. Gerwig will play a woman named Sally, described as a “female Peter Pan who has never grown up and has no idea of where she’s going in life.”; After splitting with her husband after less than a year of marriage, Sally embarks on a new (and, hopes CBS, lengthy) search for love with the support of a tight-knit group of friends and family, who are still to be cast.
CBS has given HIMYD a pilot commitment; if the network picks up the show, expect How I Met Your Mother to join the 2014 fall schedule, likely in the Monday-night time slot left vacant when HIMYM ends its nine-season run at the end of this season.
