Find Out Who's Taking Over for Reese Witherspoon in NBC's Cruel Intentions Pilot

Actress will join Sarah Michelle Gellar in the adaptation of the 1999 movie

By Jean Bentley Mar 01, 2016 8:26 PMTags
Kate Levering, Reese WitherspoonFrederick M. Brown/Getty Images, REX Shutterstock

Better get started on your manifesto, because there's a new Annette Hargrove in town.

While Sarah Michelle Gellar is set to reprise her role in NBC's Cruel Intentions TV show, the production has cast a new actress to take over the role that Reese Witherspoon made famous: Kate Levering will play Annette in the adaptation, E! News has confirmed.

The show is a continuation of the film, taking place 15 years after innocent Midwestern transfer student Annette fell under the spell of Ryan Philippe's now-deceased bad boy Sebastian Valmont.

Broadway vet Levering most recently co-starred for six seasons as a successful, driven lawyer on the Lifetime dramedy Drop Dead Diva. She also played a lawyer on UPN's short-lived Kevin Hill.

Melissa Moseley/Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock

In Cruel Intentions, she'll play small-town mom Annette, whose son, Bash Casey (newcomer Taylor John Smith), discovers that he was the product of Annette's steamy high school romance with Philippe's Sebastian. When Bash heads to San Francisco to meet his birth family, Annette will follow—coming face-to-face with her former nemesis, Kathryn Merteuil (Gellar).

There, Annette will have to fight for her son's soul as he becomes enraptured by the money and power of his birth family—and the intoxicating influence of his aunt Kathryn (Sebastian's step-sister).

The show comes from the team behind Los Angeles' Cruel Intentions musical, Jordan Ross and Lindsey Rosin, and the film's original writer and director, Roger Kumble, who will also direct the pilot. The original film's executive producer, Neal Moritz, will also produce the show.