Martha Stewart and José Andrés team for NBC's Yes, Chef! / Live-action Dungeons & Dragons in the works at Netflix / Samantha Bee claps back at Lorne Michaels

PLUS: Jeff Daniels to play a magazine editor in Apple TV+'s Dilettante.

Martha Stewart and José Andrés team for Yes, Chef!, an NBC reality cooking competition
Top Chef producer Magical Elves is behind Yes, Chef!, premiering April 28, starring the two "Emmy-winning kitchen gurus guiding 12 chefs with ego issues or short fuses through culinary challenges that will put their personal and emotional issues to the test," per Variety. "The chef who best handles the heat, 'impressing with both their food and teamwork while improving their behavior,' will win a $250,000 prize." Yes, Chef!, which aims to help naturally talented and highly skilled chefs overcome their worst instincts and reach their full potential, “blends the high-stakes thrill of a cooking competition with the raw emotion of personal transformation as it delves into the powerful personalities attracted to the chaotic culinary lifestyle,” according to the official logline. Stewart's involvement in Yes, Chef! comes 20 years after she starred in another NBC reality show: The short-lived The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

Netflix developing live-action Dungeons & Dragons series The Forgotten Realms
"In one of Netflix’s biggest TV bets in the fantasy space to date, the streamer has taken in for development The Forgotten Realms, a live-action Dungeons & Dragons series," reports Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. "The project comes from one of the top producers on the streamer’s roster, Shawn Levy (Stranger Things, Deadpool & Wolverine), writer-showrunner Drew Crevello (WeCrashed) and Hasbro Entertainment. As the title suggests, the proposed series will take place in the iconic campaign setting and centerpiece of the Dungeons & Dragons universe, a fantasy world that is home to some of the brand’s most famous characters and launchpad for some of D&D’s most popular adventures." Andreeva adds: "Ever since then-Hasbro subsidiary eOne in 2021 made launching a live-action Dungeons & Dragon series a top priority, Netflix has felt like a logical home for it given the major boost the streamer has given to the classic fantasy role-playing game through its prominent presence on one of Netflix’s biggest shows, Stranger Things."

Jeff Daniels to play a magazine editor in Apple TV+'s Dilettante
The Greg Berlanti-produced Dilettante is described as a fictionalized coming-of-age story set in the glamorous and cutthroat “Golden Age” of magazines in 1990s New York, inspired by Dana Brown’s 2022 memoir Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph, and Disaster, about working for former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. According to Deadline, the Emmy-winning Daniels "will play a fictional magazine editor that is certain to draw parallels to Carter the way another work of fiction about a young assistant to a powerful New York magazine editor, the movie The Devil Wears Prada, has been evoking Anna Wintour as a prototype for its editor character played by Meryl Streep. Jeff Bridges previously played a magazine editor loosely based on Carter in the 2008 movie How to Lose Friends & Alienate People." Brown is writing Dilettante with Julia creator Daniel Goldfarb. Daniels is coming off of starring in Showtime and Amazon's American Rust and Netflix's A Man in Full.

The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, is nearing a greenlight at Hulu with Ann Dowd and Chase Infiniti
Dowd is expected to reprise her Emmy-winning The Handmaid's Tale role as Lydia in The Testaments. Presumed Innocent‘s Infiniti is set to play Agnes. "Like The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments is based on a novel by Margaret Atwood. And just like the mothership series, the sequel is created by Bruce Miller who serves as showrunner," says Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. Filming is expected to begin in March Andreeva adds: "The Testaments takes place in the dystopian theocracy of Gilead more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The story follows the lives of three women, Aunt Lydia (Dowd), Agnes (Infiniti) and Daisy, whose fates become intertwined as they uncover the secrets of Gilead and the resistance against its regime. The hope has been for The Handmaid’s Tale lead Elisabeth Moss to guest star on the sequel, reprising her June character, but as of now, it is uncertain whether that would happen, I hear. In The Testaments TV series, June is Agnes’ mom, something the book hints at but does not state."

Legally Blonde prequel series casts Lexi Minetree as Elle Woods
The Murdaugh Murders actress beat out Madison Wolfe for the lead in the Reese Witherspoon-produced prequel series from Amazon MGM Studios. Witherspoon shared a Instagram video of her breaking the news to Minetree.

Issa Rae cancels an upcoming Kennedy Center event in response to President Trump's takeover
"Hey D.C. Fam," the Insecure creator and star wrote to her fans. "Thank you so much for selling out the Kennedy Center for 'An Evening With (Me).' Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artist of all backgrounds through all mediums, I’ve decided to cancel my appearance at this venue. All tickets will be refunded. Thank you so much for understanding and I hope to see you soon. Love, Issa."

Dying for Sex, starring Michele Williams and Jenny Slate, gets an FX premiere date
All eight episodes of the Wondery podcast-based series will drop on April 4. "Inspired by the story of Molly Kochan, previously told on a Wondery podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex stars Williams as Molly, who receives a diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic breast cancer and, after deciding to leave her husband (Transparent‘s Jay Duplass), begins to explore the full breadth and complexity of her sexual desires for the first time in her life," according to TVLine.

Amazon Studios quietly steps back from diversity goals amid President Trump's anti-DEI crackdown
"Amazon Studios is rolling back division-wide policies aimed at boosting diversity on its series and films," reports The Hollywood Reporter's Winston Cho. "The Culver City studio implemented in 2021 an inclusion playbook, with the goal of more accurately reflecting audiences worldwide. The standards revolved around boosting racial, ethnic and gender diversity, including one that aspired to cast at least one Black, Latino, Indigenous, Middle Eastern or Asian character for speaking roles. Other goals featured aiming for at least 30 percent of positions to be filled by women and people from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups, with plans to increase this to 50 percent last year; and casting actors whose identities match the characters they’re playing. In addition, productions were asked to seek bids from at least one woman-owned business and minority-owned business. The inclusion playbook was removed from Amazon’s website in September and is no longer in effect." An Amazon Studios spokesperson said of the change: "We’ve said from the beginning that our efforts to ensure diverse and inclusive storytelling would be fluid and change over time. We continue to evolve this vital work in concert with our commitment to keep our global audience of viewers at the center of everything we do. Above all, we strive to tell the very best stories, while empowering diverse voices in our storytelling wherever possible.”

Variety's "The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the 21st Century" list includes Veep's Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, but not Mad Men's Jon Hamm
In compiling its list, Variety limited itself to scripted series that premiered after Jan. 1, 2000 (so no The Sopranos or Sex and the City) and limited itself to one performance per show (Elisabeth Moss' Peggy Olson won the Mad Men slot over Jon Hamm's Don Draper). The list also excludes True Detective's Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, Killing Eve's Jodie Comer as Villanelle, Empire's Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon, Dexter's Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, 24's Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton (Brett Goldstein made the list instead), How to Get Away with Murder's Viola Davis as Annalise Keating and House's Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House.

SNL50 adding 200 seats to Studio 8H for Sunday's three-hour special
“We (will) have about 450 people in the studio, which is essentially about 200 people more than we would normally have," longtime Saturday Night Live production designer Keith Raywood says of the NBC primetime special, which will air live coast to coast. The extra seats will not only be for former cast members, hosts and musical guests, but also for their friends and family, plus other special guests. “Imagine all the people who have been on the show – those cast members and hosts," says Raywood. "It’s a lot of people (there to see them). And, those seats don’t normally exist." But they couldn't add seats to the floor. “We built down from the balcony," says Raywood. "We continued the seating all the way down to the floor…like bleachers.”
ALSO:

• Willie Geist and Leslie Jones will host SNL50: The Red Carpet on NBC, Peacock and E!, with Matt Rogers as correspondent

• SNL teams with Volkswagen for a "The Californians"-themed commercial

Samantha Bee claps back at SNL boss Lorne Michaels over 2016 insult
In Susan Morrison's upcoming biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, Michaels is quoted as saying two weeks before the 2016 presidential election in response to criticism for allowing Donald Trump to host in 2015: “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan. We have our biases, we have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee. (Morrison adds that he “meant one-sided and strident.”). In response, Bee said on The Daily Beast Podcast: "I mean, literally—imagine calling anyone strident when you have built a career out of elevating the loudest guy in the room." Bee added: "I get referenced in the book, as I learned on the Daily Beast, as being someone that (Michaels) does not want to emulate in any way. I concede the point. He’s right. I am one-sided. And I am strident, and proudly so.” Bee added that she only has positive things to say about SNL, which she grew up watching. "As a young kid, it felt like an illicit pleasure. It’s just all in my consciousness and I love it," she said.

HBO considering another Targaryen Game of Thrones spinoff
“We have other spinoffs that we’re working on right now, one of which — which I won’t get into — is very promising, and it is still the Targaryen line,” HBO's head of drama Francesca Orsi told Deadline. “There’s a number of other spinoffs, we can’t really guarantee what’s going to go forward, but we are very big budget on the other ones. I would say this is the most intimate one.”

Could Scott Hanson leave NFL RedZone for NBC Sports and its Gold Zone?
Hanson, who has hosted NFL RedZone since 2009, has become a free agent as his NFL Media contract expiring with the end of the NFL season and with his contract talks “stalled,” reports Front Office Sports' Michael McCarthy, who adds: "NBC is eying Hanson to return as Gold Zone’s primary prime-time host for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and possibly the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics..." Hanson, who could also become part of NBC Sports’ NFL coverage, drew rave reviews hosting Gold Zone for last year's Paris Summer Olympics, but he shared hosting duties with Andrew Siciliano and Matt Iseman and Jac Collinsworth. If Hanson leaves NFL Media, Siciliano — former longtime host of DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket Red Zone — could take over Hanson's role as NFL RedZone host.

Dexter: Resurrection adds five
Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Kadia Saraf, Dominic Fumusa and Emilia Suårez will star opposite Michael C. Hall in Showtime's Dexter sequel series.

Phaedra Parks is a no-show for Married to Medicine's Season 11 reunion
Parks' decision to skip today's taping comes after she exited the Bravo reality show for Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 16.

Hulu clarifies email saying that "circumstances may require" ads in ad-free tiers
In a statement to The A.V. Club, Hulu said ad-free subscribers will see ads during sports and other live events. Netflix's ad-free subscribers also see ads for sporting events.

NBC hires Carmelo Anthony as an NBA studio analyst
The retired NBA superstar will serve as one of NBC's top studio analysts when the network returns to broadcasting NBA games next season.

For All Mankind spinoff Star City adds three
Solly McLeod, Agnes O’Casey and Alice Englert will join previously announced cast members Rhys Ifans and Anna Maxwell Martin.

CNN announces docuseries Twitter: Breaking the Bird
Premiering March 9, the four-part docuseries will follow the rise of Twitter and its sale to Elon Musk, who changed its name to X.

Netflix's Ransom Canyon, starring Josh Duhamel and Minka Kelly, gets a premiere date and teaser
The romantic modern western drama, based on Jodi Thomas' book series, debuts April 17.

Peacock teases Twisted Metal Season 2
Anthony Mackie is returning as John Doe this summer, though no official date has been announced.

Hulu releases the trailer for Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke
Premiering Feb. 27, the three-part true-crime docuseries tells the story of YouTuber and influencer Ruby Framke's downfall after she was arrested for child abuse.