Casting Couch: Future "Lost" Death Pool Winner Nikki Heads to "Football Wives"

Ah, Kiele Sanchez. You might be playing one of the most reviled Lost characters to date (yes, even more so than Ana Lucia) but at least you (or your agent) has got an exit strategy already in place.

Sanchez, who plays Nikki on the ABC series, has only showed up in a handful of episodes this season as one of the survivors of doomed Oceanic Flight 815, but producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof suggest that Nikki and her toyboy Paolo (Rodrigo Garcia) come to the forefront of the series in an upcoming episode to become iconic characters. (Hmmm. Perhaps they're the Adam and Eve corpses last glimpsed in Season One? Doubtful, but a boy can dream.)

In the meantime, Sanchez has been cast in ABC's drama pilot Football Wives, a US adaptation of the British hit soap Footballers Wives, opposite Lucy Lawless and Gabrielle Union. She'll play the pregnant wife of an up-and-coming football star who has a few secrets of her own.

So it's a done deal then, right? Not quite. Sanchez's commitment to Football Wives, should it get ordered to series, is in second position to Lost. Meaning, if the Lost producers decide they want to keep Nikki around, Sanchez will have to pull out of a future Football Wives series.

So Nikki and Sanchez might just be sticking around the beach for a little while longer, after all.

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In other Lost-related news, ABC.com unveiled its new Lost Back Stories video campaign, featuring video clips comprising the back stories of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Locke in chronological order, using scenes from previous aired episodes to provide newbie viewers with some insight into the four major characters' histories.

The first installment, featuring a pre-teen Sawyer witnessing his mother's murder and father's suicide and an adult Sawyer's con, is already online and viewable using ABC.com's broadband video player. Additional installments will be available every Wednesday between now and the end of the season, bringing the total Lost video back stories to 60 in number.