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Tell Me a Story: 'Parenthood' Star Sam Jaeger Joins Kevin Williamson's Twisted Fairy Tale Series
Not sure if Sam Jaeger's run on Parenthood has prepared him with the kind of "parenting skills" he'll need for Kevin Williamson's (Scream) psychological thriller Tell Me a Story. Jaeger joins fellow cast members Kim Cattrall (HBO's Sex and the City), Billy Magnussen (Game Night, Get Shorty), Paul Wesley (The Vampire Diaries), Danielle Campbell (The Originals), James Wolk (Zoo), and Dania Ramirez (Once Upon a Time) in the CBS All Access series. Directed by Liz Friedlander (Conviction), Williamson will executive produce his twisted re-imagining of time-honored childhood fairy tales alongside Kapital Entertainment's Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor.
Tell Me a Story takes the world's most beloved fairy tales and re-imagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Set in modern day New York City, the first season of this serialized drama interweaves The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk into an epic and subversive tale of love, loss, greed, revenge, and murder.
Jaeger's Tim is a recently widowed single father who's still reeling from the death of his wife. Hoping for a change of pace and a new start, Tim just moved to New York with his troubled daughter Kayla (Campbell) to live with his mother, Colleen (Cattrall). Desperate to cope with the grief, Tim throws himself into work while grappling with a broken-hearted daughter who seems to grow further and further away from him each day.
Here's a breakdown of the characters populating Williamson's Tell Me a Story:
● Ramirez's Hannah is a young Army vet who has returned from the war with scars both inside and out. She comes back to New York City in an attempt to rebuild her life, but when her estranged brother calls for help she finds herself in a deadly chase for survival.
● Wolk's Jordan is a young, idealistic and successful NYC restaurateur whose life falls apart when the unimaginable happens, sending him into a spiraling decent into madness that could cost him everything – even himself.
● Wesley's Eddie is a derelict and troubled individual whose petulance is fueled even more by his problems with drugs and alcohol. Although he works as a bartender, he also splits his time as a low-level drug dealer and part-time thief with his older brother Mitch, who never fails to treat Eddie as the lowly delinquent that he is.
● Campbell's Kayla recently moved from Oakland to New York with her dad. Losing her mother a year ago, Kayla finds herself straying away from her once-promising path: hanging with the wrong crowd, partying – anything to distract from the pain and grief of her mother's death.
● Cattrall's Colleen is Kayla's very non-traditional grandmother: a former chorus girl is going to have to grow up finally and take on the parental duties to protect her family against a very dark and sinister threat.
● Magnussen's Nick is a young high school teacher who's handsome, seductive, and quite possibly a wolf in sheep's clothing. After a wild night with a girl he met at a nightclub results in a hookup but no phone numbers swapped, he thinks his chances with her have gone out the window. But when he runs into her again, he's sure to take advantage of his second chance, proving he's sensitive, understanding… and, quite possibly, too good to be true.
CBS All Access has actively announced several additions to their programming slate. Tell Me a Story joins a roster of original content that also includes: Star Trek: Discovery, The Good Fight and No Activity; with Strange Angel, $1, a Twilight Zone reboot from Jordan Peele (Get Out) and a recently announced expanded Star Trek television "universe" all a part of the streaming service's future.
CBS' streaming service marks Williamson's (The Following) first series outing outside of "The Big Four" (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) after a lengthy contractual agreement with Warner Bros. TV, where he was responsible for series such as The Vampire Diaries, Stalker, The Secret Circle and Time After Time.