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The Newsroom has found its new litigator.

TV vet Marcia Gay Harden is joining the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO cable drama. She’s replacing Rosemarie DeWitt who, as we posted last week, is leaving the show after shooting only a couple episodes from the upcoming second season (parties involved citing scheduling issues for her early departure from the show). So now Harden will take over the recurring role of Rebecca Halliday, a litigator who defends Atlantis Cable News in a wrongful termination suit. DeWitt’s completed scenes will be re-shot with Harden.

Harden has previously had arcs on USA’s Royal Pains, NBC’s Law & Order: SVU and FX’s Damages. The Newsroom returns this summer.

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Rosemarie DeWitt is exiting HBO’s The Newsroom.

The United States of Tara and Mad Men actress is leaving the program after shooting only a couple episodes from the Aaron Sorkin cable news drama’s upcoming second season. She will be replaced by another actress and the production plans to re-shoot her character’s scenes. DeWitt was cast in the recurring role of Rebecca Halliday, a litigator who defends Atlantis Cable News in a wrongful termination suit. One source says storyline changes shifted the role’s production timeline and created a conflict for DeWitt (as a recurring character she wasn’t contracted to stay available throughout the whole season like a series regular).

Here’s a statement from HBO: “As the production schedule for season two of The Newsroom has shifted, Rosemarie DeWitt has encountered scheduling conflicts and will no longer be able to continue in her role.”

Aaron Sorkin is seeking some conservative insight for the second season of HBO’s The Newsroom.

The acclaimed writer is hiring media consultants of all political stripes to help advise the show’s writing process, The Newsroom creator told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. The consultants will be from TV, print, and online media disciplines and represent “every part of the ideological spectrum.” Sorkin said the hires will lend some real-world newsroom experience and give the show “a political perspective that I don’t have.”

“I have some really bright interesting conservative minds who have worked in conservative politics that will help me bolster some conservative arguments at those moments that we’re talking about politics,” Sorkin said after the show’s panel. “I don’t know yet exactly the timeline of when season 2 takes place, but I would be extremely surprised if it didn’t include the election and the conventions. So there’s going to be those kind of [political] arguments coming up.”

Sorkin was then asked if he felt the first season of The Newsroom was weaker because of a lack of conservative consultants.

“I don’t,” the writer replied. READ FULL STORY »

Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom is shaking up its writing staff for season 2. The series is getting rid of some of its scribes, HBO confirms. One report said Sorkin fired most of the writers on the show except his “ex-girlfriend [Corinne Kingsbury].” One source close to the show, however, says the Newsroom layoff body count isn’t quite that high.

“Every year each show reassesses the needs of its writing staffs,” HBO said in a statement. “This process is nothing out of the ordinary.” In other words, the network is telling us news writers that The Newsroom firings are not newsworthy. As a critique of the media by a writer as esteemed as Sorkin, however, HBO has to know that what’s going on behind the scenes at The Newsroom is going to draw heavy media interest. Sorkin has also recently been defending the show against critics.

So far, The Newsroom has performed fair in the ratings, averaging around 2 million viewers for its premiere episodes.

UPDATE: Aaron Sorkin hiring conservative ‘Newsroom’ consultants, denies firing writers

Aaron Sorkin’s polemic about the state of TV journalism opened to middle-of-the-road ratings on HBO Sunday night.

The Newsroom delivered 2.1 million viewers for its premiere run. Including its first encore performance, Newsroom tallied 2.7 million total for the night. Newsroom also shed a fair amount of its big True Blood lead-in (4.7 million). All factors considered, if the new drama’s Atlantis Cable News were a real cable network, this would be an MSNBC-size number instead of Fox News-size number, but at least it’s not a Current TV-size number.

The Newsroom audience was bigger than HBO’s last drama series debut, the disappointing horse-racing drama and PR headache Luck, which premiered to 1.1 million last January and was later canceled. Yet the performance is softer than the debut of Game of Thrones (which opened to 2.2 million, but lacked a big lead in and with repeats had 4.2 million by the end of its first night) and well below Boardwalk Empire (4.8 million).

Critics were mixed to negative on The Newsroom, though EW.com’s own Ken Tucker argues that, “For all its flaws, The Newsroom is well worth watching.” Given that Luck (1.1 million) and Treme (also 1.1 million) were both rather quickly renewed by HBO for a second season, chances are really good that HBO will give another season to Newsroom too.

Read more:
‘The Newsroom’ premiere review: Did Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series make you mad as hell, or happy as a clam?
‘The Newsroom’: Watch first episode online