Is Bobby Cannavale the next Jeremy Piven? Rob Thomas must think so, as he’s just cast the journeyman actor in the title role of his revamped Cupid for ABC.
Despite Cannavale’s rather extensive IMDb filmography, I’ve only seen a handful of the movies in which he’s appeared (most recently: Fast Food Nation, Snakes on a Plane, Happy Endings and The Ten), and I can’t say he made much of an impression in any of them. He won an Emmy Award for his recurring role on Will & Grace, but that’s not exactly a pulse-quickening accomplishment. And while he certainly looks like a happy-go-lucky fella, his eyebrows are the stuff of nightmares; he’d better be the next Eugene Levy with those fuckers cluttering up his forehead.
I’d feel much better about Cannavale’s casting if Thomas had also landed a suitable replacement for Paula Marshall, but The Hollywood Reporter is mum on any such developments (though they do mention in the same story that Bob Odenkirk has been cast in the obnoxiously-monikered pilot Mike Birbiglia’s Secret Public Journal – can’t fail with a title like that!). In case you didn’t watch the show during its brief run back in the late 90s, Cannavale will play Trevor Hale, a charming eccentric who claims to be the banished Roman God of Love. In order to return to the heavens, he must unite 100 seemingly mismatched couples.