Fox is doing everything it can to broaden the audience for Scream Queens.
Twilight star Taylor Lautner has joined the cast of the Ryan Murphy anthology’s star-studded second season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Season two of the series, from Murphy and Brad Falchuk, is set in a hospital where some of the most fascinating and bizarre medical cases are under observation. Lautner joins John Stamos as one of the series’ new male leads. He will play Cassidy Cascade, a doctor at the hospital who suffers from a strange medical condition and becomes a suspect when a series of tragic events plagues the institution.
Golden Globe nominee Jamie Lee Curtis, Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin, Keke Palmer, Glen Powell, Billie Lourd and Niecy Nash will reprise their season one characters. Stamos, who previously played a doctor on NBC’s ER, will play Dr. Brock Holt, the hospital’s brilliant but secretive head surgeon.
For Lautner, the role marks his first U.S. TV series regular gig and comes as he co-stars on the BBC comedy Cuckoo. He is best known as Jacob Black in the Twilight franchise and most recently starred in the Netflix feature The Ridiculous Six. Lautner is repped by WME and Untitled Entertainment. The role comes as the former A-lister once commanded $7.5 million to star in a big-budget feature film, with the actor more recently focusing on smaller roles as he no longer command the same rate.
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Despite heavy star wattage (onscreen and off) and a pricey promotional campaign in the months leading up to Scream Queens‘ September premiere, the horror comedy from Glee and American Horror Story‘s Murphy, Falchuk and Ian Brennan struggled to lure live viewers en masse. But what it lacked in live viewership it made up for in DVR, on-demand and online audiences, and Fox bosses Dana Walden and Gary Newman quickly began touting the younger-skewing series as “the model for contemporary viewership.” The series averaged a 186 percent gain versus its live-plus-same-day delivery (8 million vs. 2.8 million), marking the biggest multiplatform percentage gain ever for a Fox series over the comparable period.
Season two of Scream Queens debuts Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
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