Patricia Heaton Plots New TV Show After ‘Carol’s Second Act’ Cancellation

Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton is planning a return to television, just a year after CBS canceled her latest sitcom, Carol’s Second Act. The new project already has a “script-to-series” commitment from Fox, even though the project has no title or writer attached, reports Deadline. Heaton will reunite with Aaron Kaplan, who worked on Carol’s Second Act as well.

The series will be set and filmed in Nashville, where Heaton and Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment have strong ties. Heaton splits her time between Los Angeles and Nashville, while Kapital films the Paramount+ series Tell Me A Story there. Some scenes will be filmed outside so real Nashville locations could act as a background for the show, but other scenes will be filmed in a studio. Heaton and Kaplan are now searching for a writer for this project, which does not even have a plot synopsis.

Fox Entertainment will produce the series with Kapital. Heaton and David Hunt are executive producing under their FourBoys Entertainment banner with Adam Griffin. Kapital’s Kaplan and Michael Lohmann are also executive producers on the project. Kapital also scored a script-to-series commitment from Fox for an anthology series from Hart of Dixie creator Leila Gerstein and singer Huey Lewis.

“I’m looking forward to working with Fox on this series,” Heaton told Deadline. “I have gotten to know and love Nashville over the years while visiting my son and my sister there. It’s a wonderful city with an incredible quality of life, along with a vibrant culture and so much creative energy. I want to help support and grow the entertainment production business there and shooting a TV series in Nashville would provide hundreds of jobs for local cast and crew.”

Heaton is best known for her two-time Emmy-winning performance as Ray Romano’s on-screen wife in the 1996-2005 sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. She played another mother in ABC’s The Middle, which ran from 2009 to 2018. In 2019, she starred as Dr. Carol Kenney on Carol’s Second Act for CBS. Unlike Raymond or The Middle though, Carol failed to catch an audience and was canceled after one season.

Heaton also published her memoir Your Second Act: Inspiring Stories of Reinvention. In the book, Heaton wrote about reinventing herself and how her faith in God helped change her life. “I have lived a life beyond my wildest dreams and I’m so grateful,” she told PEOPLE last year. “Life wasn’t handed to me on a silver platter by any stretch. I’ve worked hard, skinned my knees, cried my eyes out, regretted, doubted, and second-guessed myself along the way.”