Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: After a lengthy search, Anne Heche has been tapped to star in Save Me, lifting the contingency on the NBC comedy pilot, which will now go into production. Heche will also serve as a producer on the single-camera project from writer John Scott Shepherd, Sony Pictures TV and Neal Moritz’s studio-based Original Films. Save Me centers on a woman (Heche) who, after an accident, starts to believe that she is channeling God. The project, which received a cast-contingent pilot order by NBC in September, was originally developed by NBC’s head of comedy Tal Rabinowitz while she was SVP Comedy at Sony TV and was initially set up at Showtime just as current NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt was leaving the pay cable network in 2010. Shepherd is executive producing with Original Films’ Moritz and Vivian Cannon as well as Scott Winant (Californication). Men In Trees alumna Heche, repped by UTA and Untitled, most recently co-starred on the dark comedy Hung, which had a three-season run on HBO. Save Me now joins two other NBC comedy pilots with formal green light: Isabel, which is filming, and the recently picked up Kari Lizer female buddy comedy.

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