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More Aussies win roles in US TV pilots

Ben Lawson is the latest Aussie to land a major role in a US TV pilot.

He’ll play Michael, a smart, funny, good-natured, dermatologist in the ABC comedy Damaged Goods. The show will feature Justin Hartley and Steve Talley as screwed-up guys who hook up with equally screwed-up women.

This is a big year for Lawson  with roles in Hoodlum Entertainment’s Network Ten drama Secrets & Lies, Wayne Hope’s comedy Now Add Honey, Playmaker Media’s Love Child on Nine, and his brother Josh Lawson’s directing debut, black comedy The Little Death. He’s also had guest roles in Rake and the US series The Exes, Bones and Friends with Better Lives.  He's repped in Australia by United Management.

Aussie actress Indiana Evans has just been added to the cast of ABC’s drama pilot Secrets & Lies, which  starts shooting today in Wilmington, North Carolina. She plays Natalie, the teenage daughter of  Ben (Ryan Phillippe),  who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young boy when he finds the body.

Evans, the former Crownies, H20: Just Add Water and Home and Away regular, has a recurring role in Screentime's Janet King.

Among other Aussies working in US pilots are Sarah Snook, who will play the title role in ABC’s drama Clementine as a troubled 28-year-old psychic who sees her life begin to change in unexpected ways when she decides to stop running from her past. Mykelti Williamson will play  a hard-working, recently divorced Philadelphia detective.

As IF has reported, Puberty Blues star Isabelle Cornish will play a straight-A student and cheer-leader daughter of the local Sheriff in Sea of Fire, an ABC drama which traces the fall-out after three teenage girls appear in a porn film.

Don Hany, who starred in The Broken Shore, Serangoon Road, Devils Dust and Offspring, will play a trauma surgeon for a US military hospital in ABC’s pilot Warriors.

Natasha Bassett (Wild Boys, the Oz-shot NBC series Camp) will portray a 17-year-old who gets upset when her dad gets remarried soon after her mother dies in the Fox comedy pilot Here’s Your Damn Family.

Perhaps the best gig of all has gone to Ashley Zukerman, who’s been cast as one of the leads in WGN America’s 13-episode series Manhattan, set during the clandestine mission to build the world’s first atomic bomb in Los Alamos. Zukerman will play Charlie Abrams, a super-bright, self-described numbers guy.

Zukerman next will be seen in The Code, Playmaker Media’s thriller for ABC1.