Dwight Yoakam and Jack Black to Produce New Nashville Comedy
by Marissa R. Moss
There’s a neighborhood in East Nashville known as “Little Hollywood,” but it seems the city as a whole is adopting that moniker. Following in the footsteps of ABC’s Nashville, Jack Black has partnered up with another Tenacious “D” — Dwight Yoakam — to produce a new comedy series set in Music City, according to Deadline. Titled Belles & Whistles, the half-hour show for Fox centers on a bored father who uproots his family from Silicon Valley to the country capital in search of music stardom.
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Though it’s not explicitly stated whether or not Black or Yoakam will star in the series, they both have plenty of experience flirting in each other’s worlds. Black often puts Hollywood aside to tour as mock-rock duo Tenacious D with his partner Kyle Gass, and Yoakam has appeared on both television and in big-screen comedies like Wedding Crashers and Four Christmases. He also scored a Screen Actors Guild nomination for his role in Sling Blade alongside Americana crooner Billy Bob Thornton.
Belles & Whistles will reportedly feature a musical-performance element, a formula that worked well for Fox’s long-running theater-geek tribute Glee, and, most recently, has led hip-hop exposé Empire into a second season. Eastbound and Down’s Alex McAulay has been tapped to write and executive produce, but no further details on a premiere date have been released.
In the meantime, Yoakam will continue on his American tour through the end of the year, behind his 14th studio album, Second Hand Heart. Black, however, is drifting towards edgier roles, starring in HBO’s The Brink. “Maybe you want to play the thing you’re not,” he told Rolling Stone recently.
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