casting

Philip Seymour Hoffman Joins Showtime Comedy Pilot Trending Down

Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman attends
Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Something about Philip Seymour Hoffman — maybe the four Oscar noms since 2006, one of them a win — doesn’t scream television. Not even cable television. But here we are, learning that Phil is going to segue from his work in The Master, A Late Quartet, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire into a Showtime comedy pilot called Trending Down. He’ll play “a man facing his own obsolescence after his advertising agency is taken over.†Showtime calls the show “a blistering attack on our youth-obsessed culture, and a darkly comic examination of what it means to matter. Or matter not.†PSH will executive produce, and Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation, Afternoon Delight) will be his co-star. The series comes from Shalom Auslander, author of Hope: A Tragedy and Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir.

Showtime Comedy Casts Philip Seymour Hoffman