Ashanti, Torrey DeVitto and Elle McLemore are reporting for duty on Army Wives.
The trio have booked series regular roles on the upcoming seventh season of the Lifetime drama, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Singer-songwriter-producer-actress Ashanti, whose credits include Resident Evil: Extinction, John Tucker Must Die and Coach Carter, will make her series regular debut as Latasha Durant, an optimistic mother of three: 11-year-old Quincy Jr. (known as Deuce), daughter Nyah, 8, and Gabe, 6, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis. Latasha is described as a survivor with no self-pity who is determined to wrench all the joy out of life that she can. She's a sexy, fun woman who knows how to keep a husband -- and keep him in line.
DeVitto will play Maggie Hall, an ex-Army Airborne-turned-truck driver. She's sexy and smart with an edge and has a blue-collar upbringing in Saginaw, Mich., where the economy went south -- along with her marriage. Leaving her deadbeat husband and taking her son Tanner, 10, with her, she joined the Army to start over and found love again and married Eddie, a staff sergeant who has a 14-year-old daughter. Maggie left the Army in order to devote herself to being a wife and mother, with Eddie recently transferred to Joint Base Marshall Bring.
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McLemore, who starred on Broadway's Bring It On and guest starred on The Middle and The Suite Life on Deck, will play Holly Gordon, a wide-eyed, bespectacled farm girl from Effingham, Ill., who's newly married to a soldier and homesick, having never been more than 100 miles from home. She's a pretty girl who doesn't know it who's further described as sweet, honest and in need of friends in order to make it through her husband's deployment.
Army Wives, which was renewed in September, will return with a major shake-up for its seventh season with star Kim Delaney exiting the drama and co-star Sally Pressman recurring as the series will confront the aftermath of the deadly plane crash featured in its sixth-season finale.
Ashanti is repped by Media Artists Group and Universal Attractions. DeVitto, who recurs on both Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars, is with APA, Insight and Hansen Jacobson and next appears in Lifetime's holiday movie The Real St. Nick (set for Dec. 15). McLemore is with Paradigm and Morris Yorn.
Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit
