Jeff Daniels cast in media drama Dilettante for Apple TV+

Apple TV+ has put Dilettante in development, a series starring Jeff Daniels. Daniels (pictured) has been cast as a character likely to set New York media circles abuzz, sources said. The project, from Warner Bros. TV and studio-based Berlanti Productions, is inspired by Dana Brown's memoir about working for former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.



Written by Brown and Daniel Goldfarb, creator of HBO Max comedy-drama Julia, Dilettante is described as a fictionalized coming-of-age story set in the glamorous and cutthroat “Golden Age” of magazines in 1990s New York.

Daniels will play a fictional magazine editor who is sure to draw parallels with Carter, just as another fictional work about a young assistant to a powerful New York magazine editor, the film The Devil Wears Prada, has called upon Anna Wintour as a prototype for the editor character played by Meryl Streep.

Jeff Bridges previously played a magazine editor loosely based on Carter in the 2008 film How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

Brown and Goldfarb produce Dilettante together with Berlanti Prods.' Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Leigh London Redman.

Brown worked in the hospitality industry before becoming an assistant to Vanity Fair editor Carter and later deputy editor of Condé Nast magazine. In his memoir, published by Random House in 2022, Brown describes how he became a confidante of Carter, attending high-end media events including the Oscars, and connecting with the likes of Wintour, Lee Radziwill, Seth Rogen and Caitlyn Jenner.

Berlanti Productions and WBTV have optioned Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph, and Disaster in 2023. At the time, Brown jokingly described the potential series as "kind of like Suits but with the backstabbing of Succession," admitting that he hadn't actually watched the USA Network legal drama.

Daniels, an Emmy winner for The Newsroom and Godless (2017), recently starred in the series American Rust, which ran for two seasons on Showtime and Prime Video, and in Netflix's limited series A Man in Full. Daniels will soon be seen as former President Ronald Reagan in the upcoming Cold War film Reykjavik.

Brown produced the feature film Shelter (2015), produced and co-wrote the documentary All the Streets Are Silent (2021) and co-wrote and produced the feature film Harvest Moon.

Goldfarb is the creator of HBO Max series Julia, starring Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce. He also spent three seasons as writer/producer on Amazon's Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He is writing the upcoming adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for producer Scott Sanders and director Jon M. Chu at Amazon.

Berlanti Productions' current scripted series include NBC's Found and Brilliant Minds, Netflix's You and The CW's All American (2018).