Kern immersed in mermaid show
31 March

Brad Kern, longtime executive producer of The WB's Charmed, told Sci Fi Wire that he's written and is overseeing as an-yet-untitled pilot for a proposed WB series about a mermaid. "The mermaid is being played by a fresh new face that we've plucked out of Sydney, Australia," Kern said in an interview. "We were casting literally around the world looking for our mermaid. We looked in London and New York and New Zealand, Hollywood, Florida, Melbourne and Sydney."

Kern added: "I think we looked at around 300 people, and we finally found this amazing, fresh 20-year-old who is just an ethereal beauty. She's got a very unique look, which is what I was looking for. I wanted somebody to come out of the water who looked unlike anybody we've ever seen before. Her name is Natalie Kelley."

Kern said that, in a perfect world, The WB would pair Charmed with the mermaid series on Sunday nights. But such a scenario is contingent on The WB's both renewing Charmed for an eighth season and green-lighting the mermaid series based on the presentation pilot that's currently before the cameras in Miami. "It's the normal course of business these days to order presentation pilots as well as full pilots," Kern said. "Charmed was a presentation pilot, actually. It saves them money, and it lets them get a sense of whether or not they want to buy the series. So they'll take my mermaid pilot and six other 'dramatic' pilots that they've commissioned back to New York with them in early May and make their decision about it - and also about Charmed."