‘Munsters’ reboot: Meet Herman’s wife Lily!

NBC has finally found someone to play the wife of Herman Munster in NBC’s reboot of the classic black and white comedy The Munsters.

And the lucky gal is…

Portia de Rossi!

De Rossi joins the previously cast Jerry O’Connell (The Defenders) as the matriarch and patriarch of Mockingbird Lane, the name of Bryan Fuller’s dramatic re-imagining of the old show that starred Fred Gywnne as Herman and Yvonne De Carlo as Lily. The pilot is in development for a possible midseason berth on NBC. Why the title change? Here’s what Fuller told EW: “The script is such a dramatic departure from the tone and style of the original show. If we continued to call the show The Munsters, people are just going to to think we’re doing The Munsters. We’re doing a reinvention and re-imagination of this property. I love the Universal monsters. I love The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, Phantom of the Opera, The Mummy. There’s so many great characters we can run through this metaphor of family storytelling that it just felt it was ripe to do as a one-hour dramedy. Having all those elements to play with, the toy box is really, really full.”

Mockingbird Lane was originally developed for fall, but casting the show turned out to be a lot harder than Fuller and NBC had planned. The primary issue was finding the right cast. I tend to write in a very tricky tone,” Fuller told EW. “It’s hard to find actors who are agile enough to navigate the turns. There’s mouthfuls of dialog. Fortunately, we went to Eddie Izzard as Grandpa very early in the process. He’s a great piece of casting for us.”

De Rossi was previously attached to The Smart One, an ABC comedy that she was producing with her partner Ellen DeGeneres, but the pilot didn’t get ordered for fall.

Read more:
Bryan Fuller talks about ‘Munsters’ reboot
Jerry O’Connell cast as Herman Munster