Joan Cusack Is “Shameless”

Joan Cusack has been tapped to replace Allison Janney in the new Showtime drama Shameless, going into production next month.

Shameless — based on the long-running British series of the same name — revolves around a working-class Chicago clan dealing with the recession. Cusack has been cast as “an agoraphobic Chicago housewife with a sexually active teenage daughter” who befriends a drunkard played by William H. Macy.

The Hollywood Reporter writes: “The mother is AWOL, and the alcoholic patriarch (Macy) usually ends up passed out on the living-room floor, so their smart but unpredictable 18-year-old daughter, Fiona (Emmy Rossum), is tasked with keeping her five younger brothers and sisters on the straight and narrow.”

Shameless premieres Sunday, Jan. 9.

Things are looking rosy on the employment front for The Cusack Sibs. On Monday, Joan’s brother John announced that he has landed the role of Edgar Allan Poe in an upcoming fictionalized account of The Raven.