According to Deadline, Zoe Kazan, who you might know from What If, Bored to Death, or Olive Kitteridge (for which she received an Emmy nomination), has taken a starring role in Max, an HBO pilot written by Murray Miller and directed by Lena Dunham, who you definitely know from Girls. Miller, a writer and producer on Girls, also wrote HBO’s Andy Samberg–Kit Harington tennis farce 7 Days in Hell, which aired this summer. Max follows the story of a young magazine writer, Maxine Woodruff (Kazan), through her encounters with the rise of second-wave feminism. Think Mad Men, but with more profanity and, probably, less existential despair.
Kazan replaced Lisa Joyce in the role after Joyce’s other pilot, Insecure, starring Issa Rae and co-starring Joyce, got picked up to series. Kazan also has a co-starring role in David Simon’s new HBO pilot about the porn industry in the 1970s, The Deuce, alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Franco, who (of course) are playing twins. If both projects are picked up to series, then — as long as the production schedules allow it — Kazan could play two characters from two sequential decades on the same channel, which is the kind of thing James Franco might point out to you on set before mumbling, “TV, man, what a weird thing,†and wandering off to the craft-services table.