If it was clear to you watching Emily in Paris that Ashley Park deserves her own show, it was also very clear to Tina Fey. Park, who happened to earn a Tony nomination for playing Gretchen Wieners in the stage musical version of Mean Girls, has joined the cast of Fey’s upcoming Peacock comedy Girls5eva. The show’s premise is built around a one-hit wonder girl group from the ’90s whose members reunite to try to get another shot at fame when their work is sampled by a young rapper. Park is set to recur on the show as a character named Ashley (easy enough to remember!), who’s described as “the glue that held the short-lived girl group Girls5eva together back in the late ’90s” and who “had the most experience going in, having been part of seven failed girl groups previously.” Meredith Scardino created the show, which Fey executive produces. Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond, who wrote the music for 30 Rock and the songs for the Mean Girls musical, is also onboard for Girls5eva. You wanna be Fey’s TV star? You gotta get with her stage projects.
In addition to Park, Tina Fey has already assembled a comedy supergroup to play the rest of the Girls5eva. The rest of the cast includes Sara Bareilles (as Dawn, who now manages her family’s Italian restaurant in Queens), Renée Elise Goldsberry (as Wickie, the group’s star who tried to launch a solo career), Paula Pell (as Gloria, who has since become a dentist and come out of the closet) and Busy Philipps (as Summer, “the most bubbly and least talented member of the group”). For a fun logic puzzle to play at home, match them to their respective Scary/Sporty/Baby/Ginger/Posh identities yourselves.
