HBO’s comedy pilot Max is recasting its lead. Zoe Kazan has been tapped for the title role in the project written by Murray Miller and directed by Girls creator Lena Dunham. She replaces Lisa Joyce, who originally was cast in the role. Since Joyce landed the lead in Max, her other HBO comedy pilot, Issa Rae’s Insecure, got picked up to series. Joyce will now focus on Insecure, which has a strong momentum, having landed a series order shortly after the pilot was delivered.
Meanwhile, Kazan too will be pulling double HBO pilot duty — she also co-stars in David Simon’s The Deuce.
Max is described as a raucous comedy set in 1963 about the struggles of second-wave feminism, centered on an ambitious magazine writer, Maxine Woodruff (Kazan), looking for liberation. Maxine is an enthusiastic, if misguided, low-level magazine employee who stumbles into the forefront of a civil rights movement both she and the world may not be ready for. I hear there were creative differences on the future of the Maxine character, which contributed to the casting change.
Executive producing Max are a quartet of Girls executive producers, creator/star Dunham, Miller, Jenni Konner and Ilene Landress.
Kazan has an existing relationship with Dunham and HBO. At the pay cable network, she also co-starred in the Emmy-winning miniseries Olive Kitteridge and recurred on HBO comedy series Bored To Death. She is repped by UTA and Washington Square Films.
What’s up with Dunham always casting offspring of famous people? Zoe is great, but still.
“Zoe is great” would have sufficed.
Dunhams parents are famous.
So are the parents of Michael Douglas and Ben Stiller. What’s your point? (And let’s be honest, her mom is a photographer I doubt you can name)
YESSS another feminism project with Lena Dunham involved. Something to show the kids I’m sure!
Came here to say the exact same thing. Granted, Zoe Kazan is already a well established actress but Dunham is not doing herself or her reputation any favors with this continued insistence on only casting the offspring of celebrities. Perhaps these are just the people she can best relate to?
“Dunham is not doing herself or her reputation any favors with this continued insistence on only casting the offspring of celebrities. ”
Why? What does that have to do with anything?
I just hope this one has good writing instead of gratuitous and unnecessary nudity.
When you take off your clothes to bathe (do you take your clothes off to bathe?), is that gratuitous and unnecessary nudity?
I still get the chills when I think of the ping pong scene. And yes…I take my clothes to bathe but a woman taking her top off to play ping pong for no apparent reason!?! Come on. I just saw the Fury Road Mad Max movie and there were several women rescued by Charlise and Tom who were very sexy and could have been topless at some point but it didn’t happen. Thank you George Miller. That nudity would have completely changed the film which was a great movie. Don’t get me wrong–I love a woman’s naked body…but not when it takes me out of the story. It’s like a bad edit cut or a misplaced music cue.
Yes, you should wear socks or you’ll catch a cold
I smell fail all over this project.
Casting Zoe Kazan in a Lena Dunham project is like throwing a diamond onto a pile of manure.
Ouch
Sounds like another HBO project for six viewers.
I adore Zoe. I think she’s one of the most charming actresses I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait to see what she does with this. I’ll be watching… Thanks HBO!
Lisa Joyce is amazing, I didn’t know she was also in that other pilot. I guess Billy and Billie is canceled, that sucks.
Kazan graduated from Yale. Where did you
graduate from- high school maybe.
Dunham graduated from oberlin. She’s not going to work with flunky slacker druggies.
After achieving so much and short film awards at the age of 22, an open script deal with hbo. And,besides that, the characters she writes are very similar backgrounds to the actors cast. Why do people continually attack her. Is it because her female characters are not gratuitous and ornamental like female characters in most other tv shows
Another HBO show for no one. It will probably run for 6-7 years. No one wants to see Zoe Kazan in anything. They’ve been trying to sell her as a manic pixie dream girl in indies for years but she’s just a young women with weird eyes that no one wants to see on the screen. She’s probably very nice and fun off screen. But so is the barista at my local coffee shop.