Sunday June 24 07:52 PM EDT

Fehr to play lead in NBC's new 'UC'
By Nellie Andreeva

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Fresh from his turn as the leader of the mysterious Pharaoh's soldiers in the "Mummy" features, Oded Fehr has signed on to play the head of an elite Justice Department (news - web sites) undercover unit, which protects America from its deadliest criminals, in NBC's new drama series "UC: Undercover."

"It's really unusual and really lucky to get an actor to jump into a TV series coming off a $200 million movie," said series creator and executive producer Shane Salerno. "I think that there is a fire and a weight and a presence and a soul to this man that has not been fully tapped yet."

Salerno first planned to cast Fehr as a villain in a multiple-episode arc, but after meeting with the actor, the producers began courting him to become the show's leading man. "He took the air out of the room," Salerno said about Fehr's audition.

Fehr is not replacing Grant Show, who played the head of the undercover unit in the Jersey Films/20th Century Fox TV/NBC Studios pilot, Salerno said. From the very beginning, Show's character had been designed to exit the series in a shocking way so that a new team leader with a different skill-set would be brought in, and the only change was the decision to end Show's storyline sooner than initially planned, he said.

Fehr's character is joining the unit after running the FBI's elite hostage rescue team and struggles to adjust his methodology to undercover work.

Israel-born Fehr puts the last touch to a very diverse main cast of the series, which includes Jon Seda, who is of Puerto Rican decent, and Vera Farmiga, whose parents are Ukrainian. "This show literally is the colors of the rainbow and it was designed this way, it is a cultural cross-pollination," Salerno said.

Next for all cast members is a boot camp of intensive training for undercover agents. For Fehr, who served for the Israeli Navy for three years, that shouldn't be a problem. The actor's military experience also lands enormous credibility to his portrayal, Salerno said.

Fehr's feature credits also include "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and "Texas Rangers." On the TV side, he was featured in the ABC miniseries "Arabian Nights," Lynda La Plante's miniseries for Channel 4 "Killer Net" and the London Weekend TV series "The Knock."

He is repped by the IFA Telent Agency and attorney Geoff Oblath.