Actress and author Busy Philipps, who in recent years has also become a social-media phenom, soon will be hosting her own late-night talk show on the cable-network E!, the network has confirmed to the Cut. This puts Philipps in a very exclusive club of women who have hosted late-night talk shows: The first was Joan Rivers, while currently active members of the group include TBS’s Samantha Bee, BET’s Robin Thede, and Hulu’s Sarah Silverman.
The working title of Philipps’s show is “Busy Tonight.” She will also be an executive producer of the program, along with Julie Darmody and Eric Gurian (Tina Fey’s partner at their production company Little Stranger). Production on the show is expected to start this summer in Los Angeles, where Philipps lives with her husband writer-director Marc Silverstein and their two daughters.
Philipps has had an unorthodox rise in the entertainment business. She began as a working actress, getting her start on Freaks and Geeks and Dawson’s Creek (with her best friend Michelle Williams) and later appearing in the TBS sitcom Cougar Town with Courteney Cox. Recently, she has reinvented herself as a more full-spectrum public personality thanks to the success of her prolific Instagram feed. In the last couple years, she has amassed close to a million followers on the platform by posting raw, endearing, and often hilarious stories that frequently feature moments many celebrities wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing.
Philipps’s talk show isn’t the only big project she’s rolling out this year: last month she co-starred in I Feel Pretty, a romantic comedy starring Amy Schumer and co-directed and written by Silverstein; and in late October, Simon & Schuster is set to release her first book, a collection of autobiographical essays.
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