Pop princess Britney Spears will take a guest role in the hit United States television series Will & Grace, making her first-ever turn as a sitcom star, the NBC television network said on Wednesday.
Spears (24), who has recently slowed her musical career following the birth of her first baby, will play a Christian conservative sidekick to one of the show’s lead characters, the flamboyantly gay Jack, in an episode to be broadcast in the US on April 13.
The singer enters the show when Jack’s gay television station is bought by a Christian network and Spears’s character is brought on to be Jack’s new religious co-host.
”Spears brings her own additions to the talk show when she decides to do a cooking segment called ‘Cruci-fixin’s,”’ NBC said in a statement.
Spears’s character sets out to put the outrageous Jack on the straight and narrow, but her plans are stifled by Jack’s best friend, Will, played by Eric McCormack, who softens her up.
Dubbed by MTV as ”one of the last teenage pop superstars of the 20th century”, Spears had her big break in 1999 with the release of her mega-hit album …Baby One More Time, which debuted on the charts at number one.
She went on to become a huge sensation around the world, turning out more hits, including her 2000 album Oops! … I Did It Again, and selling more than 60-million records since her debut.
Her foray into acting has been less successful, however, with her 2002 movie debut, chick flick Crossroads, savaged by critics and shunned by audiences. — Sapa-AFP