Tony Shalhoub signs up for CBS’s brain-eating alien show BrainDead

Last Updated on July 22, 2021

When you're looking to cast someone who's going to bring the laughs, you can't go wrong with Tony Shalhoub, an actor who has been delivering fantastic comedic performances in film (MEN IN BLACK, GALAXY QUEST) and on television (Wings, Monk) for decades. Those are only four of the credits on a filmography that's getting close to having 100 projects on it.

The latest project to be added to Shalhoub's résumé is the upcoming CBS series BrainDead. As the films mentioned above prove, Shalhoub is no stranger to aliens, and he'll be dealing with them again on this show, which 

follows Laurel, a young, fresh-faced Hill staffer who gets her first job in Washington, D.C., and discovers two things: the government has stopped working, and alien spawn have come to Earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of congressmen and Hill staffers.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (pictured below) takes the lead as Laurel, with Danny Pino as her Democratic whip senator brother Luke; Nikki James as medical resident Rochelle; Aaron Tveit as Gareth, the Legislative Director to a Republican senator; and Johnny Ray Gill as eccentic genius Gustav.

Shalhoub will be playing Red Wheatus, "a hard-drinking, fun-loving Republican senator who has spent decades in Washington making deals, until a radical transformation turns him into a health-conscious extremist who would rather destroy the government than compromise."

Could that radical transformation have been caused by a brain-eating alien? We'll have to tune in to CBS this summer to find out.