Graceland’s Aaron Tveit has been cast as the male lead in the upcoming CBS series BrainDead, Deadline reports. BrainDead, which received a straight-to-series summer order from CBS in July, comes from The Good Wife co-creators Robert and Michelle King. The comedic thriller follows a young Capitol Hill staffer who is just beginning her new life in Washington when she learns that the federal government has shut down because aliens have eaten the brains of legislators and their staff members, which sounds like a pretty solid reason for a government shutdown. The series will be the first project created by the Kings as part of the three-year production deal they signed with CBS Television Studios in September 2014.
Tveit stars opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays the aforementioned fresh staffer who realizes something peculiar is going on with some of the legislators on the Hill. (And hey, we wouldn’t blame her if she initially thinks they’re just acting like typical legislators, who sometimes do act like their brains have been eaten by aliens.) Tveit will play Gareth, the smart and hard-working Legislative Director to a top Republican senator. The Kings teased that his character will be both an opponent and a love interest for Winstead’s character—a double-edged dynamic they’ve tackled many times on The Good Wife, where everyone is in a pretty constant state of loving and hating everyone. Tveit was also recently tapped to play Danny Zuko in Fox’s upcoming production of Grease: Live, which also stars Carlos PenaVega, Julianne Hough, Keke Palmer, and Vanessa Hudgens.
BrainDead is slated to premiere next summer on CBS.