With long-running television series “Mike & Molly” set to air its final episode in May, stars Billy Gardell and Katy Mixon have signed on to new TV projects.
Gardell - who plays lovable cop Mike Biggs opposite Melissa McCarthy’s Molly Flynn in the CBS comedy - will take on a dramatic role in the upcoming CMT eight-episode miniseries based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Million Dollar Quartet.” The series tells the tale of four young musicians during the early days of the civil rights movement who grew up to become the superstars that paved the way for rock ‘n’ roll and music as we know it today: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.
In the series, 46-year-old Gardell will portray Colonel Tom Parker, the man who infamously managed Presley’s career. The series - which also features “One Tree Hill’s” Chad Michael Murray as Sun Records founder Sam Phillips and “Fargo’s” Keir O’Donnell as disc jockey Dewey Phillips - will soon begin filming in Memphis (where the story is set) and is slated to premiere in November.
“‘Million Dollar Quartet’ will capture the star-crossed Memphis moments which led to the most explosive pop culture movement of the 20th century, the birth of rock ‘n’ roll,” said Brian Philips, the president of CMT. “The characters are all larger-than-life… but we’re counting on the magic of Memphis to come alive again! This is among our most ambitious projects ever, and we entrust it to a proven epic filmmaker, Leslie Greif.”
Meanwhile, Gardell’s “Mike & Molly” co-star Katy Mixon, 34 - who played Molly’s ditzy sister Victoria Flynn - snagged the lead role in a pilot for ABC called “The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport.” The single-camera comedy is about a slightly heavier wife and mother taking care of her family, including three children, in a rich neighborhood filled with “perfect” people. Diedrich Bader, who starred as Oswald on “The Drew Carey Show,” will play Mixon’s husband
One of the show’s executive producers, Aaron Kaplan, recently tweeted a photo of Mixon with child actress Julia Butters on the set of the show.
The adorable @Julia_Butters & @KatyEMixon getting ready to shoot #TheSecondFattestHousewifeinWestport for #ABC! pic.twitter.com/BjOerAdZHc
— Aaron Kaplan (@KaplanAaron) March 18, 2016
“Mike & Molly” began airing on CBS in 2010 and will end its six-season run this year. The show is set to return Monday, April 25, at 8 p.m. ET, with the very last episode of the series slated for Monday, May 16.
