Showtime orders new series with gay content

During Friday’s Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles, Robert Greenblatt, President of Entertainment for Showtime announced the cable network was ordering two pilots to series, both with significant gay content.The first announced was the tentatively titled thirty minute dark comedy Nurse Jackie, starring The Sopranos’ Edie Falco as an iconoclastic, opinionated, self-medicating nurse in New York City.The show also features Haaz Sleiman playing Maurice, a gay Muslim who is one of Jackie’s co-workers and best friends. When asked if Maurice was originally written as a gay Muslim character – something still of a novelty for American television – or was something the network suggested, Greenblatt said, “He was a gay Muslim character [from the start]. Full story...