The perpetually up-and-coming actress gets another shot at the big leagues. Also today: Showtime wisely renews their best show, Jennifer Coolidge gets grunt work, and MTV says goodbye to some friends.

  • Beloved Bill Maher guest Kerry Washington has been cast as the lady lead in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film Django Unchained. She will be playing a slave named Broomhilda (yup) who is owned by Leonardo DiCaprio's cruel plantation owner villain. So, good for her! She's been one of those on-the-verge actors for a while now, but maybe this will be the one that tips her over into big time stardom. Quentin Tarantino is good at helping actors do that! So yes, it is good. Though it makes me wonder with worry: Where will she live during filming??? [Deadline]
  • Yay! Showtime has renewed their highly enjoyable new spy series Homeland for a second season. Though that probably means that next season they'll add Chord Overstreet for some reason and nothing will make sense anymore and every week will just be a lame excuse to sing the latest pop sensation with no attention paid to any kind of narrative consistency and then they'll end up firing Chord Overstreet just when you'd gotten comfortably used to his witless blond hardbodiness. That's just how second seasons go. Though, I shouldn't worry. They'll hire Chord Overstreet back in the third season. [THR]
  • Oh dear. This is so sad. I... I'm crying here. Simply crying. MTV has gone and canceled their show The Buried Life, about a bunch of male models or something going around trying to have life changing moments. Yeah, remember that weird show? Well, it's gone now after two too-short seasons. I mean look at them. Don't you just feel so bad for them? I mean look, just really look. Isn't this terrible? It's just really, really terrible. [EW]
  • Because the poor funnylady just can't seem to get a break today, Christopher Guest alum Jennifer Coolidge has just been cast as a recurring on the hipster-happy CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls. All we know of her character is that she will be "a hardworking woman" who moves into the apartment building where that rude asshole lives with the formerly rich girl. So let's guess. Will she be hilariously sex-starved or hilariously over-sexed? Will she make jokes about how her ass is fat or how her ass is great? I really can't wait to find out! Mr. Guest, please get working on another movie for this poor woman. [Deadline]
  • Nerds rejoice! Producer Brian Grazer says that not only is the movie adaptation of Stephen King's space cowboy noir western thing The Dark Tower still in the works (albeit with a slashed budget), but that he wants there to be an HBO series too. That's twice the nerdgasm, for twice the price! (I mean, you do have to pay for HBO, after all.) That is pretty happy nerd news. In related stories, that girl Jenny who works in HR and has that wrist tattoo poking out from her sleeve has been thinking about it and yes she will go on a date with you, and scientists have just declared burritos a super food. [EW]

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