jabrams’s “undercovers”: who should be cast?

Since it was announced that JJ Abrams is developing (and maybe even directing the pilot of) a new series about a married couple who are also secret agents, I’ve been desperately waiting to hear who ends up getting cast.  Will it follow his pattern of hiring a nearly-has-been 90′s actor and a completely unknown but devastatingly beautiful actress?  The man has made quite a pattern of maneuvering actresses from obscurity to the cover of Entertainment Weekly.  Keri Russell, Jennifer Garner, Evangeline Lilly, and Anna Torv certainly owe at least some of their success to him.  (And, hey, just saying–Evangeline Lilly will technically be available…)

But anyway. I’ve been thinking about who could potentially be cast who we do already know.  In that respect, the female half of the couple is easier.  My suggestions for both roles are after the jump.

My first choice would be, well, Keri Russell.  Since Felicity, she’s discovered not only millennium-era hair product, but also roles with a lot of comedic heart.  (Waitress, in which she stars as a pregnant southern gal trying to bake her way out of a bad marriage, is easily in my top-five.)  She also made a very memorable appearance in Jabrams’s Mission: Impossible 3, and even though she (spoiler alert!) dies in the first twenty minutes of the movie, she kicks some major ass before that happens.  Some folks on Twitter told me they don’t think she has enough of an edge for this part, but I disagree.  She could totally make “I’m trying to be a good wife, but I can also beat the living crap out of a terrorist” happen.

There’s also Alicia Silverstone, and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why she hasn’t had a more illustrious career.  After a couple of not-promising-enough sitcoms, including the almost-good Miss Match and the not-at-all-good The Singles Table, she would really benefit from getting attached to a project like this–one she doesn’t have to carry all by herself, but that would benefit from her unique blend of endearing, genuinely funny, and fierce when necessary. (Unless she wants to go and be the mother on How I Met Your Mother. That’d be okay with me, too.)

Then there’s my girl Mae’s girl Jennifer Morrison, from House. Rumored to be unemployed (but then again, maybe not, who knows), Jennifer has the Jabrams connection from that little movie called Star Trek.  (She gave birth to the future Captain Kirk in the first twenty minutes of the movie.)  It’s too bad that everything about House is, in my opinion, completely unwatchable–they’re all just so hateful!–because most of them are good actors.  And Jennifer Morrison is one of them.  I don’t understand why she’d even want to stay on House, because she’s so underused and what they do give her is whoa contrived and unnecessarily ridden with angst.  So let Jabrams steal you if he comes knocking. You might even get to be on the cover of EW.  (A cursory examination of covers shows me that Hugh Laurie, but never the entire cast, has appeared on the EW cover. And, yeah, I’m using that as THE measure of your importance in the pop culture zeitgeist. Because it is.)

Okay, so moving on to the boys …

Another interesting pull from the past would be Scott Speedman, who played Ben on Felicity.  (Don’t worry, I’m not gunning for a Felicity/Ben reunion–that would just be stupid and way too gimmicky and unnecessary.)  Speedman could easily follow the Matthew Fox/Joshua Jackson path of being saved from post-teen-drama irrelevance by Jabrams.  (The last thing I remember him doing was that movie The Strangers, which I totally would have seen if I thought I’d be able to without immediately finding a roommate bigger than Freckles.) Plus, look at him! I would so want to be married to and also go on secret missions with him.

He’s probably too famous, but James Marsden would be a good fit.  (Of course, all of this is based on the three sentences of background we have on this series. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out who should take these parts, but it really doesn’t matter, because no one has seen a script or anything, so it’s not like we know what these characters are actually like.  I think I’m basing these suggestions solely on who I would like to see torture people and then make out together.) And, just saying … The Box has been doing really bad at the box office, and EW gave it a C minus. (Yep, still using EW as the guide to entertainment. Sue me.) You never know.  Also, I don’t know how much of a pull Jabrams is for actors. I’d have to imagine they want to work with him.  And if this show works, they’ll he heralded as the actors who saved NBC.  Anyway, just throwing that out there.

And, finally, there’s John Stamos. Thanks to ER and Twitter, he’s moved up from the C-list to the decidedly B-list.  Currently starring in Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway, he might be looking for a new project.  He’s certainly charming and handsome (not sure I could take him seriously as an agent, though), and thanks to his role as an avid Tweeter, we’d be sure to get lots of backstage insight and Twitpics.  That said, did you know he’s 46 years old?? Though he definitely doesn’t look 46, he still might be a little old for the part. 46, after all, is 124 in TV years.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I hope whoever gets these parts warrant flailing, no matter who they are. Also, notice that I’ve created an official “Undercovers” tag–very exciting!