Mystery solved: Debra Messing will be the one putting Baby in the corner.
TVLine has learned that Messing has joined ABC’s Dirty Dancing remake in the role of Marjorie Houseman, Dr. Houseman’s wife and mother of Baby (the previously cast Abigail Breslin). Messing succeeds Kelly Bishop, who played the repressed matriarch in the 1987 film. Additional casting is TBA.
The three-hour movie is slated to shoot this spring during Messing’s Mysteries of Laura hiatus.
To be adapted for television by Jessica Sharzer (American Horror Story) and counting Dirty Dancing screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein among its executive producers, the Lionsgate TV-produced redo will feature “filmed song and dance performances” as it follows Frances “Call Me Baby, But Don’t Put Me in a Corner” Houseman, an innocent 1960s lass who vacations with her family in the Catskills and eventually falls for the resort’s swivel-hipped, working-class dance instructor, Johnny Castle.
Wayne Blair (Australia’s The Sapphires) will direct the telepic, while Hamilton‘s Andy Blankenbuehler, a Tony Award winner, will serve as choreographer.
What do you think of Messing’s casting? Can you picture her as the uptight Marjorie? Hit the comments!
