NBC is developing a comedy set in the world of figure skating with someone who knows the ice well: Olympic medalist Adam Rippon.
Rippon, a breakout star from the 2018 Winter Olympics, and media executive and avid skater Susan Kittenplan are co-creators and have story credit on the untitled project, which comes from Disney’s 20th Television. It has a script commitment plus penalty at NBC. Billy Finnegan (Grace and Frankie) will write and executive produce; Rippon and Kittenplan are also EPs.
The potential series is set in the off-the-wall world of adult figure skating, where oversized ambitions, underwhelming talent and boundless heart take center ice. It centers on one woman who fights her family, failing knees and every other skater at the rink to make her dreams come true.
Rippon won a bronze medal in the men’s team figure skating event in 2018 and became a face of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, where he also used his platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ causes. The network asked him to become a correspondent for the remainder of the games after his competition finished, but he turned it down to remain with his teammates in the Olympic village.
He subsequently won an all-athletes edition of Dancing With the Stars on ABC, made a guest appearance on Will & Grace and hosted Quibi’s This Day in Useless Celebrity History.
Kittenplan is a former Yahoo and Conde Nast executive and is president emeritus of the Skating Club of New York. She skated competitively as a child and took up the sport again more than 20 years later.
Rippon is repped by ICM Partners; Kittenplan by Alex Kohner and Ahsley Briskman of Morris Yorn; and Finnegan by Rise Management and Jamie Feldman at Lichter Grossman.
The project joins a development roster at NBC that also includes a Fried Green Tomatoes adaptation from Norman Lear and Reba McEntire and a drama from Blake Shelton and The Fast and the Furious writer Gary Scott Thompson, among others. The network has also rolled a number of its pilots from last season to the current cycle.
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