Killam and Pharoah Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images
The duo recently exited NBC's 'Saturday Night Live.'
Days after exiting Saturday Night Live, Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah have landed new gigs at Showtime.
Taran Killam has been tapped to star in Mating, the comedic anthology pilot from the Parenthood and Friday Night Lights creator, while Pharoah will topline the cabler's Jamie Foxx comedy, Showtime president David Nevins announced Thursday at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour.
Written and created by Stu Zicherman (The Americans, Lights Out, Six Degrees), Mating explores modern mating, with each season exploring a different protagonist's journey. The comedy will center on a recently divorced guy who tries to evolve and connect, one date at a time.
The casting lifts the contingency off the project, which was contingent on finding a leading man for the yearlong anthology. Sources say the role is a one-year deal as season two would tell a different story. Zicherman will pen the script and executive produce Mating alongside Katims and his Universal Television-based True Jack Productions topper Michelle Lee. The project was first put in development in August 2014. With the pilot order, Showtime has boarded the comedy as a co-production with Universal Television.
Mating is True Jack's latest small-screen project. Katims also is writing the pilot for romantic drama Us at HBO as well as CBS drama Pure Genius. Additionally, True Jack is exec producing Hulu's cult drama The Path, which was renewed for a second season.
For Showtime, meanwhile, Mating serves as a reunion for Katims and David Nevins, who exec produced Friday Night Lights.
White Famous, meanwhile, hails form Californication's Tom Kapinos, who will pen the script. White Famous is based on an original idea by Foxx. The comedy marks a return for Kapinos to Showtime following his seven-season run on the David Duchovny series Californication. A co-production between Lionsgate Television and Showtime, the project focuses on a talented, young African-American comedian (Pharoah) whose star is rising, forcing him to navigate the treacherous waters of maintaining his credibility as he begins to cross over toward becoming “white famous.”
The news follows the recent departures of Pharoah and Killam from Saturday Night Live. "Our conversations have been with the actors and it's been happening over the last several weeks, probably a month, individually. We were prepared to work around their SNL schedules," Nevins said of talks with SNL creator Lorne Michaels about signing the duo as they were heading into their last year on the series.
