“The Morning Show” is getting a youth infusion: Renee Rapp is joining the cast of the Apple TV drama for the upcoming Season 5, TVLine has learned.
Rapp will recur as Samantha, “a young rising star in the UBN news division determined to make it in media on her own terms,” per the official character description.
“The Morning Show,” centered on a fictional morning TV talk show, earned a Season 5 renewal from Apple TV in September. Rapp joins an all-star cast that already includes Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup, and Jon Hamm. Also joining the cast for Season 5: Jeff Daniels and “Grey’s Anatomy” alum Jesse Williams.
Rapp is best known to TV fans for playing Leighton on the HBO Max comedy “The Sex Lives of College Girls”; Rapp left the series, though, in its third season. She also played Regina George in the Broadway musical version of “Mean Girls” and the subsequent movie adaptation. Plus, she’s expanded into music, releasing two albums and appearing as the musical guest on a 2024 episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
In other casting news…
* “Stranger Things” alum Maya Hawke will return to Netflix to star in the drama series “The God in the Woods,” the streamer has announced. Based on the bestselling novel, the series will star Hawke as Judy, “the first female investigator in the male-dominated Bureau of Criminal Investigation” who “is assigned to unravel the disappearance of a young girl from a summer camp in upstate New York.”
* Krysten Ritter (“Jessica Jones”) will star in a series adaptation of her own novel “Retreat,” Deadline reports. She’ll play Liz Dawson, “a chameleon-like grifter who is always in control — until she’s cornered into assuming the identity of a wealthy dead woman.” (No network or streamer is attached yet.)
* “Yellowjackets” has promoted Jenna Burgess — aka teen Melissa, the younger version of Hilary Swank’s character — to series regular for the fourth and final season, per Deadline.
* Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Nosferatu”) will star in Netflix’s adaptation of the bestselling novel “Enigma Variations.” The series “tells the story of a man remade by the lovers who ignite and undo him over the course of ten transformative years.”
* NBC’s “The Rockford Files” reboot has added Felix Solis (“The Rookie”) to its cast, Deadline reports. He’ll play defense attorney Nitty, the best friend of David Boreanaz’s private eye James Rockford.