TV: Parks and Recreation Gets Third Season

NBC has picked up a third season of Parks and Recreation! The network, which has also ordered an additional two episodes for Season 2, announced Friday that the show will definitely be back in the fall. :)

Exclusive: Party in Pawnee! 'Parks and Rec' Picked Up

Fans of NBC's "Parks and Recreation" can exhale: The show will be back next fall.

NBC has just picked up the third season of the Amy Poehler comedy from executive producers Greg Daniels and Mike Schur ("The Office"), sources confirmed Friday. The greenlight comes far sooner than typical network renewals for sophomore series.

The show had certain production timing issues that made an early renewal necessary, network sources said. "Parks and Rec" has also quickly become a favorite of NBC executives, including NBC U TV chief Jeff Gaspin and NBC Entertainment president Angela Bromstad.

After an OK start last spring, "Parks and Rec" has turned into a major buzz magnet among critics and bloggers, landing on a slew of year-end top 10 lists. The series' ratings, while still softer than NBC would probably like, have been consistent and in line with other scripted series in the 8:30 p.m. Thursday time slot.

Season to date, "Parks and Recreation" is averaging a 2.3 rating/ 6 share in adults 18-49 and 5.1 million viewers overall, retaining 95 percent or more of the time period's 18-49 lead-in with 13 of 14 original telecasts to date. The show also does well with ad-friendly rich folks, ranking among the top 15 primetime series on the major networks in its concentration of homes with $100,000+ annual incomes in its adult 18-49 audience.

By Josef Adalian
Published: January 29, 2010

via The Wrap

Appearances: Artists for Haiti Benefit

Rashida at the Artists for Haiti benefit in Santa Monica on Thursday night. The fundraising event was hosted by Olivia Wilde and Artists for Peace and Justice and included a minimum $100 donation and silent art auction.

Appearances: The Art of Elysium Charity Gala

Rashida in Prada at The Art of Elysium's 3rd Annual Black Tie Charity Gala "Heaven" in Beverly Hills.

Video: Parks and Rec Screen Test

Here's Rashida in another Funny or Die video: in this one RZA does a screen test for Parks and Recreation. Thanks for the tip Justin :)

"Parks and Recreation is the Wu-Tang of Comedy"

Parks and Recreation is the Wu-Tang of Comedy - watch more funny videos

News: A Director for Celeste & Jesse Forever

According to The Hollywood Reporter, filmmaker Seth Gordon is set to direct Celeste and Jesse Forever for Team Todd/Overture. Seth and Rashida previously worked together when he directed a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation last year. Other news sites are saying filming will start in April.

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'Four Christmases' helmer eyes divorce movie
Seth Gordon to direct Rashida Jones in comedy 'Forever'

Seth Gordon is in negotiations to develop and direct "Celeste and Jesse Forever," a divorce comedy set up at Overture.

Rashida Jones is attached to star and co-wrote the script with Will McCormack, which tracks a couple in the midst of a divorce attempting to maintain their friendship while pursuing new relationships.

Jennifer and Suzanne Todd are producing.

The project was first set up at Fox Atomic, but moved to Overture when that shingle was shuttered.

Gordon made a splash with his documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," then jumped into the studio world with New Line's "Four Christmases." The director, repped by WME and Brillstein Partners, is also developing the long-gestating comedy "Horrible Bosses" for New Line.

By Boris Kit, Jan 12 2010
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Appearances: NBC 2010 Winter TCA Tour

Rashida was out promoting Parks and Recreation at the Television Critics Association Winter Tour on Sunday in Pasadena.

The Parks and Recreation panel


The cocktail party later that night

Interviews: Vanity Fair Q&A

I just realized this post about a Q&A Rashida did with Vanity Fair never actually went up (sorry Chloe). It's from mid-December but better late than never!

Q&A | Question Time

Rashida Jones is All About Hot Chicks Kicking Ass!

When word hit the Internet not long ago that Rashida Jones, the co-star of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, was creating her own comic book series—a spy thriller called Frenemy of the State, co-written with Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, that will be published in early 2010 by Oni Press—the response was a resounding “Yes, please.” Actually, as sometimes happens when attractive women mix with comic fandom, things got a little creepy. Bloggers didn’t hesitate to use terms like “geek chubby” when describing their excitement. And as one online commentator noted, “Rashida Jones is so hot, and the fact that she made a comic makes her much hotter.”

Jones isn’t the first actress to try her hand at comic book authorship—Jenna Jameson and Rosario Dawson both created their own graphic novels, Shadow Hunter and Occult Crimes Taskforce, respectively—but something about Jones’s comic ambitions seems especially surprising. After all, this is the daughter of Quincy Jones and the Mod Squad’s Peggy Lipton. This is the woman who played the woman who cock-blocked Pam on The Office. Sure, she got all the worst lines in the Paul Rudd/Jason Segel flick I Love You Man, but goddammit, she was in I Love You Man! A woman of her pedigree should be hanging out in Hollywood nightclubs, snogging with John Mayer and trying to decide if she’s too drunk to drive. Learning that Rashida Jones wrote a comic book is like finding out that the hot cheerleader at your high school is really into video games and heavy metal. It’s validation that maybe the things that you love don’t necessarily make you a social outcast. To borrow a phrase from Benjamin Franklin, it’s proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

I called Jones to talk about Frenemy of the State and comics in general. She was gracious and outgoing, talking to me with the warmth of an old friend. And best of all, she was unfazed by the occasional jackassery of my questions—especially when I asked her if she could convince Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau (who she’s rumored to be dating) to slip some Li’l Wayne lyrics into the president’s next speech (“Look at the ice, radiculous price. Your camera has neva seen a picture this nice”)—for which I am eternally grateful.

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Your comic is about a rich heiresses named Ariana Von Holmberg who leads a double life as a C.I.A. spy. I’ve heard that the character is loosely based on Paris Hilton but, well… that can’t be true, can it?

It sounds like kinda a stretch, I know.

When most people look at Paris Hilton, they don’t think, “Hmm, I wonder if she’s secretly fighting crime?” They think, “Hmm, I wonder how long until her next amateur porno leaks?”

Back when Paris was at her height of fame and people were just obsessed with her, I had this funny notion that she’s actually some crazy genius who knew exactly what she was doing, and she was just conducting this elaborate anthropological study on the world. I imagined that she was going home every night and whispering into her mini-recorder: “Day three hundred and twenty seven. I continue to have them all fooled.” That was sort of where the idea for this comic started. And also, I’m obsessed with our country’s almost cannibalistic obsession with people who are famous for no other reason than that they’re famous. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to give somebody like Paris Hilton another layer? What if her fame is something more than just an overwhelming need to be an object of desire?”

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Read the rest here at vanityfair.com

Interview by Eric Spitznagel