Oscar winner Octavia Spencer has signed up to star in Steven Spielberg's new TV drama Red Band Society after plans to remake acclaimed crime show Murder, She Wrote were scrapped last month.
Spencer's casting emerges less than a month after bosses at NBC decided to axe the Murder, She Wrote revival, which would have featured the actress taking on Angela Lansbury's iconic role of amateur detective Jessica Fletcher.
The Help star will now make her TV debut in the role of Nurse Jackson, an authoritative, intuitive woman who doesn't put up with "the crap" from the teenage patients at her hospital in Spielberg's new project.
The upcoming series, an adaptation of the Spanish show Polseres Vermelles, will be produced by the movie mogul and it will air on US network Fox.
