Freddie Prinze Jr. to play Nancy Drew’s dad

Actor Freddie Prinze Jr. with wife, actress Sarah Michelle Gellar. Image: AFP/Lucy Nicholson via AFP Relaxnews

The CW’s as yet untitled Nancy Drew pilot, inspired by the series of novels about the young detective, has added the actor Freddie Prinze Jr. to its cast.

The CW show will be based on the classic novels about Nancy Drew, a young amateur sleuth in the fictional town of River Heights. The TV pilot’s plot will focus on 18-year-old Nancy (played by newcomer Kennedy McMann), who has just graduated high school and is all set to leave her hometown for college. But when tragedy strikes her family, she finds herself caught up in a murder mystery which threatens to reveal long-hidden secrets.

Prinze Jr. will play Nancy’s father Carson Drew, an attorney who is trying to reconnect with his daughter after the recent death of his beloved wife. But Nancy’s murder investigation will uncover unsettling secrets from Carson’s own past.

Tunji Kasim, Leah Lewis, Maddison Jaizani and Alex Saxon also star.

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (“Gossip Girl”, “Dynasty”, “The O.C.”) will produce the pilot. Melinda Hsu Taylor will serve as showrunner, with Larry Teng directing from a script by Noga Landau.

Prinze Jr. (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “She’s All That”) played detective Fred Jones in the two live-action “Scooby-Doo” movies in 2002 and 2004. He recently wrapped shooting on CBS comedy pilot “I Mom So Hard”. JB

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