Surprise! Kevin Smith has cast himself into another role as a pothead.
The Mallrats and Clerks director and star has just finished production on a TV comedy called Hollyweed, according to Variety. Smith and Donnell Rawlings (from Chappelle’s Show) will play two potheads who manage a small pot business in L.A. with help from a porn star played by Frankie Shaw (Mr. Robot). Smith wrote and directed the half-hour show.
“When I wrote ‘Clerks,’ I wrote the role of Randal to play myself. But as we got close to shooting, I got scared and chickened out of trying to act with dialogue, opting to play Silent Bob instead,” Smith told Variety. “Two decades later, the universe, StarStream, and FremantleMedia are giving me the chance to play a clerk with dialogue that I wrote. The fact that it’s a dispensary instead of a convenience store makes it even better.”
Variety notes that Smith, with financing from FremantleMedia and five cannabis-related businesses, produced the project on spec because there are many pot TV shows currently in the works. Other projects include Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre working on an untitled comedy set in a legal marijuana dispensary in Colorado, the NBC show Buds starring Adam and Naomi Scott, and Amazon’s series Highland starring Margaret Cho.
Hollyweed also stars Kristin Bauer van Straten (True Blood) as a “cookie magnate” who works next door to the dispensary. The show will feature appearances from Adam Brody, Chloe Dworkin, Jason Mewes, Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith, and others.
Smith is executive producing the project with Jana Edelbaum and Rachel Cohen, as well as StarStream’s Pete Pietrangeli, Kim Leadford, and Dan McCarney.
This weekend, the Smith written and directed comedy horror film Yoga Hosers starring Johnny Depp premieres at Sundance. He’s also supposed to be beginning production on his Mall Rats sequel, called MallBrats, this month.
