Building on his years of experience of longing to be a man, only to be seen as a hulking monster, Jerry O'Connell has landed the role of Herman Munster in NBC's Mockingbird Lane. The actor, Stanislavski-trained in the art of being relatively tall, will take on the role of the Munsters' patriarch alongside the previously cast Eddie "Grandpa" Izzard and Mason "Eddie" Cook, with O'Connell playing—in Bryan Fuller's fantastical yet melancholy reboot of the campy '60s series—a Frankenstein-inspired zombie "in a constant state of decay," a dramatic situation that no amount of puns can alleviate. Fuller tells Entertainment Weekly that much of the drama will come from O'Connell's marriage to a beautiful wife whose bloodsucking ensures she never ages, and also some of the stuff that Fuller will write for the TV show. Speaking of feeding on the power of others, Fuller also called the series an "American Harry Potter" and "an American Horror Story that the whole family can watch"—both of which sound better than "an edgy Munsters reboot starring Jerry O'Connell," so good for Bryan Fuller, going for broke and all.
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