Lucy Punch has been cast as Cameron Diaz’s female co-star in Jake Kasdan’s upcoming comedy “Bad Teacher,” THR reports.
The British star is set to appear as Amy Squirrel, the “good” foil to Diaz’ raunchy role as a seventh-grade teacher. This marks Punch’s first lead role in a big time American production (barring Woody Allen’s European-produced “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger,” due later in the year) after a string of smaller turns in both markets. But with two significant roles now added to her CV, it seems that the actress is impressing in recent auditions. One year ago she was basically an unknown in the U.S. with only a few major roles under her belt (small parts in “Hot Fuzz” and “Death Proof”), but apparently she’s now topping films with Cameron Diaz (though she’s done a lot of U.K. TV work, she’s not exactly a household name across the pond either). Not bad.
The film is yet to have cast its male lead, though both “Hangover” hunk Bradley Cooper and Judd Apatow regular Jason Segel have reportedly been in talks. With Diaz breaking out of her oft-goody image and the rest of the potential and confirmed cast developments, we’re hoping that the film will turn out to be a rather enjoyable comedy. In fact one of our scribes read the screenplay and found it “enjoyably mean-spirited.” Penned by “The Office” co-writers Gene Stupinsky and Lee Eisenberg, hopefully the cast will round out the project into a worthwhile investment. Kasdan’s last picture was the only semi-successful, “Walk Hard,” for Judd Apatow (it’s probably not going down in history as an Apatow classic).
Lucy Punch has also already started shooting the rom-com, “Earthbound” with Gael Garcia Bernal and Kate Hudson. – Jon Davies