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Zoe Kazan to play lead in new Lena Dunham comedy

By Margaret Menge
Zoe Kazan at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 12. File Photo by Christine Chew/UPI
Zoe Kazan at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 12. File Photo by Christine Chew/UPI | License Photo

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Zoe Kazan has been chosen to play the lead in a new HBO comedy pilot to be directed by Lena Dunham, creator of Girls.

Zoe Kazan, age 32, an actress and playwright whose paternal grandfather was the director Elia Kazan (Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Splendor in the Grass), will play the lead role in Max, a comedy that follows a young magazine writer named Maxine Woodruff who stumbles into second wave feminism, according to Deadline Hollywood.

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Max is set in the year 1963.

Kazan will take the place of Lisa Joyce, the actress who was originally chosen to play the lead role, but who had to back out after another HBO pilot she's involved with got picked up as a series.

Zoe Kazan began acting in films in 2003. In 2008, she had her Broadway debut, in the William Inge drama Come Back, Little Sheba.

In 2009, she played Meryl Streep's daughter in the film It's Complicated.

She's also a playwright, having graduated from the prestigious Yale University theater program. Her play Absalom, about a father's difficult relationships with his children, was performed at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2009.

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Kazan was born in Los Angeles. She is the daughter of screenwriters Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Nicholas Kazan, son of director Elia Kazan. In addition to playing the lead role in the Max pilot, Kazan will co-star in the pilot of the HBO drama The Deuce with James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The Deuce, written by former Baltimore Sun journalist David Simon, tells the story of the rise of the porn industry in New York.

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