Casting Couch: Amanda Righetti to Play "Marlowe" Sidekick

Every good private eye needs a sassy assistant/sidekick. (Just look at Papa Keith and Veronica for proof of that.) And Phillip Marlowe just found his.

Amanda Righetti (who to me will always be remembered best as the spoiled Hailey on The OC) has been cast in ABC's drama pilot Marlowe, a modern-day update of Raymond Chandler's classic noir character who solves cases and nurses hangovers in contemporary Los Angeles. She joins Jason O'Mara (Monarch of the Glen's Fergal), who plays the titular private eye.

Righetti will play Nancy, an aspiring dancer who's also Marlowe's part-time gal Friday. But don't discount any sexual tension there. In fact, the two have a rather tortured past together (hint: she was once the victim of a crime Marlowe investigated, but that's all I'm saying for now).

I actually quite liked the script to Marlowe (written by Greg Pruss and Carol Wolper), which offered a modern noir drama with hard-boiled dialogue, sultry femme fatales, and some fisticuffs to make any fan of Chandler's (or of Rian Johnson's recent noir high school flick Brick) salivate.