Veteran television actor Ed O’Neill, Peacemaker’s Danielle Brooks, and John Higgins, part of the Please Don’t Destroy comedy group, have joined Cameron Diaz in Bad Day, an action comedy Jake Szymanski is directing for Netflix.
Written by Laura Solon, the original script centers on a single mom fighting to keep one little promise to her daughter on the absolute worst day of her life.
The project has been described as a comedic version of Falling Down, the 1993 drama directed by Joel Schumacher that starred Michael Douglas as a man who hits his breaking point while trying to get to his daughter’s birthday.
O’Neill is playing the mom’s curmudgeonly father-in-law who seems intent on making everyone’s life miserable.
Brooks is a grumpy NYPD detective trying to track down the mom, while Higgins is Brooks’ cop partner.
Beau Bauman, who produced Back in Action, is producing with his Good One Productions. Solon is executive producing along with Mark Moran.
A massive name in the television world thanks to shows such as Modern Family, O’Neill portrayed Donald Sterling, the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, in FX 2024 dramatic mini-series Clipped. He recently wrapped shooting Hulu‘s All’s Fair, Ryan Murphy’s new all-star legal series in which he will be playing Glenn Close’s husband, a former powerful Hollywood studio head. The show debuts in November.
On Peacemaker, the DC Studios show whose second season is currently mid-stream on HBO Max, Brooks plays Leota Adebayo, the daughter of the scheming Amanda Waller. She also appeared in A Minecraft Movie and earned an Oscar nomination for her performance as Olivia in Warners’ recent adaptation of The Color Purple.
As a member of Please Don’t Destroy, Higgins spent the last several years writing and producing digital shorts for Saturday Night Live. He made headlines earlier in September when it was announced that he would not be returning for the show’s 51st season and the group would not be producing any more shorts for the show. Additionally, he appeared in the Tom Hanks movie A Man Called Otto.
O’Neill is repped by Gersh and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Brooks is repped by CAA and Door24 while Higgins is repped by WME and Mosaic