'Twilight' Alum Joins NBC Western Pilot (Exclusive)

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Chaske Spencer

NBC is adding a Twilight werewolf to its Frontier pack.

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Twilight's Chaske Spencer -- best known as Sam, the leader of Jacob's wolf pack in the franchise -- has boarded the NBC Western drama pilot The Frontier, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.

The project, from writer/exec producer Shaun Cassidy, revolves around a group who follows their dreams and heads West from Missouri across the unchartered country in the 1840s.

Spencer will play Eli, a cook who's traveling with his mentally unstable aunt, Luisa. He's described as an optimist who's trying to be patient with his aunt's real and imagined fears who ventures off with part of group to search for others.

Ethan Embry (Empire Records) will play DJ, a bittersweet and sardonic guy in a sham marriage to Megan Ferguson's (Boardwalk Empire) Payton, who is described as a Georgia girl who is half Scarlett O'Hara and half Tallulah Bankhead.

Jake McLaughlin (Savages) will play Cooper, a strong and driven farmer with stellar fighting skills. Bridget Regan (Perception) has been cast as Hannah, a beautiful woman in her late 20s who bonds with Cooper despite traveling with her husband. Al Weaver (Doom) will play Ben, a heavyset writer in his early 30s who is charged with chronicling the group's journey. Gina Bramhill (Being Human) will play a young woman Ben pulls to safety from a collapsed sandbank who is headed to meet her fiancé for the first time.

Thomas Schlamme will direct and exec produce the drama, from Sony Pictures Television and Prospect Park.

Spencer is the second Twilight alum to book pilots this season; Breaking Dawn Part 2's Toni Trucks (aka Nomad coven member Mary) joined CBS' legal drama pilot Baby Big Shot.

Spencer is repped by Abrams Artists Agency and Josselyne Herman & Associates.

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