The following is not even one full day’s casting gossip from the pilot sphere.

Leah Remini and Sara Rue, who are, for many of you, the quintessential ‘TV people’ have each booked pilots that sound exactly like TV-people pilots:

- Rue plays a nosy neighbour.

Elsewhere, Remini’s former The Talk cohosts are cackling.

Those of you who care about Luke Cafferty should know he’s landed in the period piece Gilded Lilys which sounds a lot like “Downton Abbey, now with Luke Cafferty!”

Minnie Driver finally signed onto an NBC pilot after a month of awkward negotiations where ABC wouldn’t let her out of a talent contract there, and NBC tried to barter Kal Penn for her. Like he was her dowry, or something.

“Just....just take him!  Just give us the tall girl!"

And, after a big splashy announcement that Goldie Hawn would play the lead in The Viagra Diaries, she's out.  No longer playing.  And nobody's saying anything, so it's not like she's making a statement all "yeah, the script was not up to my standards". In fact, sounds like she was the one being difficult, seeing as they saw umpteen actors to play the suddenly-midlife-crisis husband, and none met with her approval, which I guess she negotiated for.

This is so delicious to me.  On the one hand, it's Darren Star and Paul Feig, and in theory they know how to put together a show, especially when it's HBO and there's freedom, so like, take it easy, Goldie, you're in good hands.  And then there's a movie actress who knows that her name is part of what's making this show go, and she's obviously negotiated a producer credit, and lord knows she has the resume to back her sh*t up.

Except that somewhere, a bluff is being called here, because she's out and the show's still going. Yikes. There's nothing quite like that to show you you're not as indispensable as you thought. Is Goldie fuming? Or does she think she dodged a bullet? Lainey asked me if Sarandon would do this but she doesn't seem quite right to me, maybe because she went through a breakup not that long ago. I'd love to see Meg Ryan shake the dust off and do this - can you imagine?

The fun of pilot season is everyone's looking for a job at the same time (In four weeks when the actors' dust is beginning to settle, it's the writers' turn). It's musical chairs and literally until the music stops, where you thought you landed is not where you might actually be.  It's actually an insane way to live....but the rewards are good enough for the gamble.

It should be mentioned that Goldie will work, if she wants to, this year. The woman looks fantastic.She can still do a whole lot of whatever she wants. (Lainey: or WHOever she wants!)

Source