Lauren Graham to Play Late Night Talk Show Host in Sitcom

We won’t be seeing any women take over an actual late night talk show anytime soon but we will get a new scripted series about how a fictional woman who is a talk show host. Yay?

Considering Lauren Graham is playing lead role, you can probably go ahead and shout out that ‘yay.’ According to Entertainment Weekly Ellen DeGeneres is also listed as a producer of the show, which is called Kate on Later:

NBC has given a script development deal to Kate on Later, which, if ordered, would be a potential post-Parenthood starring role for Graham, who is also co-writing with Liz Tuccillo. The half hour, single-camera comedy follows its titular character breaking into the heavily male world of late-night talk shows, which the show’s official logline deems one of the “last remaining glass ceilings.”

Tuccillo was a writer on Sex and the City and co-wrote the book He’s Just Not That Into You with Greg Behrendt. She also authored the book How to Be Single in 2008.

Deadline reports the show centers on Kate (played by Graham), “who thought her day job was all her life would amount to when an opportunity arises that’s bigger than she ever dreamed possible.” Everything is going great until she realizes she now has to deal with a predominantly male world that is notoriously unwelcoming to women.

I cannot wait for this, personally. If they do it well and don’t dance around the real issues that keep the “glass ceiling” in place behind the scenes in late night television, I think it could be important. Maybe seeing a fictional character on television every week will help everyone FINALLY get used to the idea that women are funny and, yes, can handle being the face of a late night show. Fingers crossed.