J.Lo Seeking TV Maid

Jennifer Lopez is dusting off Maid in Manhattan for the small screen

By Josh Grossberg Aug 13, 2008 4:05 PMTags
Jennifer LopezTheo Wargo/WireImage.com

Jennifer Lopez is dusting off this Maid for the small screen.

After scoring a box-office hit back in 2002 with Maid in Manhattan, the actress-producer is now developing an hourlong comedy-drama for ABC based on her Cinderella story about a luxury hotel cleaner who hides her identity after falling for a wealthy senator.

Lopez will coproduce the Maid in Manhattan series with Joe Roth and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. Scribe Chad Hodge will pen the pilot, which he says will delve more into Marisa's world taking care of the hotel's rich guests with her fellow workers.

"The show is a different maid in a different Manhattan," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "While the hotel's clientele is an obvious part of this world, I'm more interested in the downstairs part of Upstairs, Downstairs."

In the movie, J.Lo plays the title character, Marisa Ventura, opposite a dashing Ralph Fiennes as Christopher Marshall, the star politician who became infatuated with her after mistakenly thinking she's a socialite.

Hodge added that the tube dramedy's Marisa will remain a young Latina from the Bronx.

This is Roth & Co.'s second attempt at adapting Maid in Manhattan for television. The principals last tried to do so in the 2004-05 season but nothing came to fruition.

For this go-round, Lopez is said to be deeply involved in the creative process with her producing partner, Simon Fields.

When she's not growing her TV slate, the 39-year-old multihyphenate and newly minted mother of twins is gearing up to return to the big screen in two films next year: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, a dramedy about a woman's troubled relationship with her stepson, and The Governess, an action comedy about a thief who poses as a Mary Poppins-style nanny in order to pull off a heist, only to fall for the wealthy widower who hired her.