'Private Practice's' Audra McDonald to Co-Star in CBS Drama 'Ordained'

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Audra McDonald

Audra McDonald is staying put at CBS.

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The Private Practice actress, currently guest-starring on the network's The Good Wife, has landed a co-starring role on the network's drama pilot The Ordained, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

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Ordained centers on Tom (Boardwalk Empire's Charlie Cox), the son of a Kennedy-esque family who leaves the priesthood and becomes a lawyer to prevent his politician sister from being assassinated.

McDonald will play Anthea, a senior litigator at the law firm where Tom works and his main mentor, immediate boss and ally who runs Iron Man races to unwind and lives to win cases. Lost's Jorge Garcia also co-stars as the firm's chief investigator.

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Journalist/author Lisa Takeuchi Cullen will pen the script for CBS Television Studios and will executive produce alongside Frank Marshall, Larry Shuman and A.B. Fischer. RJ Cutler will helm the pilot, with Robert Zotnowski on board as a co-EP.

The casting marks the five-time Tony winner's return to series television following her run on ABC's Shonda Rhimes medical drama Private Practice, where she recently reprised her role for the show's January series finale. McDonald is repped by WME. She joins fellow Private Practice stars KaDee Strickland and Mason Cook with pilot gigs this season.

Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit