Las Vegas

On September 28, Las Vegas returns for yet another run. With a little more than two weeks to pass the time, show creator Gary Scott Thompson dishes out on what's in store for season 5.  According to Thompson, the upcoming season is extra special since it will also include the 100th episode of the show, some exciting new drama with the inclusion of Tom Selleck and some resolution to the cliffhangers unanswered from season 4.

Broadcast on NBC, Las Vegas is a series that follows a team of people working in the fictional Montecito Resort and Casino in Las Vegas as they deal with work issues, including restaurant management, casino security, and many more.  It features Danny McCoy, (Josh Duhamel), Mike Cannon, (James Lesure), Samantha Jane "Sam" Marquez, (Vanessa Marcil), DeLinda Deline, (Molly Sims), Jim Cooper, (Tom Selleck), and Piper Nielsen, (Camille Guaty), and many more.

“We're scheduled to premiere on September 28 as a two-hour premiere.  It will be Jimmy Caan's exit and Tom Selleck's entrance.  I left last season in massive cliffhangers, so we will resolve all of those cliffhangers.  We'll find out if Delinda makes it out of the explosion, who killed Mary's father, what the repercussions of the shooting are, and obviously some of our characters are leaving, and new ones are coming in.  Tom Selleck comes in as the new owner of the casino, and hilarity ensues.  Plus, Sam was kidnapped, thrown in a trunk, and is flying away with a psycho on a plane. That's going to be the primary storyline for Vanessa Marcil's character for the next four or five episodes,” he told TV Guide.

As for how Selleck was cast on Las Vegas, Thompson reveals that they had to come up with a list of actors that will possibly fill in for Jimmy Caan's departure.

“Yeah, we did have a short list.  It was ‘call Tom Selleck,' to be very honest.  Here's what happened. We got word that Jimmy was leaving to do movies, and we were like ‘Oh my God, we're losing this acting icon, what are we going to do, who are we going to replace this guy with?' First of all, you can't replace Jimmy Caan.  I spoke to my casting director and said ‘Give me a list, what are we going to do?' And she – and my wife actually – and I all thought of Tom Selleck, but no one said it out loud.  Then, one night my wife said ‘Tom Selleck,' whom I had been thinking of too.  I floated his name to Kevin Reilly, and everyone was on board.  But everyone had the same question: ‘How are you going to get this guy? You're going to get this guy to be a series regular when he hasn't done that since Magnum? Good luck with that, Gary.' So we floated it out there to his people, and he called me out of the blue.  He came in and we talked, and we met about two hours each day for a few days over two weeks, talking about who he would be.  We're still developing the character around him as we shoot the show now. We had one direction that we were going to go in, but now we're going in another.  We're trying to figure out who this guy is,” he said.


-Kris De Leon, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: TV Guide
(Image courtesy of NBC)