Two-time Oscar nominee Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich, Capote) has joined the cast of Showtime’s upcoming series, Kidding. The half-hour comedy series will star two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon, The Truman Show), marking his returns to series TV as a regular after more than 20 years. Oscar winner Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is on board to direct. The project reunites Gondry with Carrey, his Eternal Sunshine star.
Season one of Showtime’s new comedy series will consist of 10 episodes. The series was created by Dave Holstein (Weeds, Raising Hope) and is executive produced by Michel Gondry, Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Jim Garavente (Bad Words), Raffi Adlan (The Green Hornet), and Michael Aguilar (I’m Dying Up Here). Holstein wrote the pilot and is Kidding‘s showrunner.
Keener’s credits include a supporting role in 2017’s critically acclaimed Get Out which earned her a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination in the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture category as well as a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the San Diego Film Critics Society. Keener also starred in Begin Again, Enough Said, Friends with Money, Into the Wild, Johnny Suede, Walking and Talking, and Lovely and Amazing.
The Kidding Plot: In Kidding, Jim Carrey plays Jeff, aka Mr. Pickles, an icon of children’s television, a beacon of kindness and wisdom to America’s impressionable young minds and the parents who grew up with him – who also anchors a multimillion dollar branding empire. But when this beloved personality’s family – wife, two sons, sister and father – begins to implode, Jeff finds no fairy tale or fable or puppet will guide him through this crisis, which advances faster than his means to cope. The result: A kind man in a cruel world faces a slow leak of sanity as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.
Catherine Keener will play Deirdre, who thanklessly builds all the puppets on the hit children’s show hosted by Jeff while never being allowed to voice them. She struggles to take the simple lessons preached by Jeff and apply them to the darker complications of actual parenting.
