NBC’s Hungry has already found its new lead: Modern Family star Ariel Winter will replace Demi Lovato in the upcoming multi-cam comedy pilot, Deadline reports.
She succeeds Lovato, who had been attached to the project for almost a year but stepped down from acting duties Thursday for scheduling reasons, just as the pilot was about to start production.
With Winter on board, production is moving forward this coming week, starting with a table read on Tuesday. NBC remained high on the project, opting for a swift recasting, so the pilot stays on schedule with the rest of the cast in place. Lovato, along with manager Scooter Braun, remain as executive producers.
The comedy first received a put pilot commitment from NBC back in January 2021, followed by a formal pilot order in April. Still, it was ultimately not ordered to series that year. The pilot has since been re-developed as a multi-camera comedy instead of a single-cam and remains in contention for the 2022-23 TV season.
Written and executive produced by Suzanne Martin and directed by James Burrows, Hungry follows a group of friends who belong to a food-issues group helping one another as they look for love, success, and the perfect thing in the fridge that’s going to make it all better.
Valerie Bertinelli, Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, Ryan McPartlin, Alex Brightman, and Ashley D. Kelley also star in the pilot, which comes from Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner’s Hazy Mills, SB Projects, and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.
Winter’s recent TV credits include a guest spot on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in addition to providing voices for animated series such as Robot Chicken and Elena of Avalor.
