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After 'Alias,' Vartan is headed for the corporate suite

Michael Vartan is headed back to ABC for his first post-Alias series job. Vartan headlines the latest batch of actors taking pilot- season roles as he joins an ABC drama about a group of friends with high-powered corporate jobs. Gabrielle Union (Night Stalker), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Firewall) and Melissa Sagemiller (Sleeper Cell) have also signed on to pilots, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Michael Vartan

is headed back to ABC for his first post-

Alias

series job.

Vartan headlines the latest batch of actors taking pilot- season roles as he joins an ABC drama about a group of friends with high-powered corporate jobs. Gabrielle Union (Night Stalker), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Firewall) and Melissa Sagemiller (Sleeper Cell) have also signed on to pilots, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The Vartan pilot comes from Jon Feldman (Reunion, Tru Calling) and follows the lives of four newly minted or about-to-be CEOs. The former Alias star will play the newly installed chief executive of a big company and the "moral center" of the series.

Since ending his run on Alias last season, Vartan has filmed two movies: the horror flick Rogue and the drama Jolene, both of which are due for release later this year. His credits also include Monster-in-Law and One Hour Photo.

Also at ABC, Union has signed on to Football Wives, an adaptation of the British hit Footballers Wives. The Bring It On and Running With Scissors star will next be seen in the Tyler Perry movie Daddy's Little Girls.

Danish actor Coster-Waldau has taken the lead role in Fox's drama New Amsterdam, about a New York City cop who's an immortal and has thus been working his beat for a couple hundred years. Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules) is directing the pilot, which was created by Christian Taylor (Six Feet Under) and Allan Loeb.

Sagemiller, meanwhile, has joined the cast of Life, an NBC drama about a cop (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers) who rejoins the force after serving time for a crime he didn't commit.

Nights of the living dead.

Still rushing to fill out their development slates, CBS has ordered two drama pilots, while Fox has gone with a pair of comedies.

According to the industry trade papers, CBS has its eye on Twilight from Trevor Munson, Ron Koslow (Beauty and the Beast) and Joel Silver (Veronica Mars). The pilot, set up at Warner Bros. TV, focuses on a vampire who works as a private eye and has a love jones for a mortal woman.

CBS also has Babylon Fields on tap from 20th Century Fox. The show looks at what happens when the dead are resurrected and try to resume their former lives. Michael Cuesta (Dexter) will direct the pilot and executive produce.

Over at Fox, the network has asked for a pilot for Hackett, from Sony Pictures TV. Denise Moss (Frasier) wrote the pilot about a former literary whiz kid who leaves Yale in scandal and goes to teach at a public high school in Ohio.

Also set up at Fox is Two Families, about two people who discover they share the same bigamist father. Barbara Wallace and R. Wolfe wrote and will executive-produce.

VanCamp out of "Everwood." Former Everwood star Emily VanCamp is joining the cast of the ABC freshman drama Brothers & Sisters later this season. Her addition lengthens by one a cast list that already includes a dozen regulars and several more recurring characters.

She'll play Rebecca Harper, the heretofore unseen daughter of Holly Harper (Patricia Wettig), who for years was William Walker's (Tom Skerritt) mistress and has roiled the Walker family since William's death. An airdate for her first appearance hasn't been set.

"Ugly Betty" seamstress elopes. Ashley Jensen put some time off from Ugly Betty to good use last week: She got married.

The Scottish-born actress, who also stars in Extras, and longtime boyfriend Terence Beesley eloped to Big Sur on the central California coast and exchanged vows last week. They've been together for seven years.

Jensen says she had a few days off from the Betty set last week, so she and Beesley drove up the coast and tied the knot (their dog, Barney, served as ring bearer). She was back on set late last week.

In addition to Ugly Betty, in which she plays Christine, Mode seamstress and confidant to Betty (America Ferrera), Jensen plays the hapless background actor Maggie on Extras. That show is midway through its second (and most likely final) season on HBO.

Beesley is also an actor; his credits include appearances on a number of British series, including Poirot, Casualty and Midsomer Murders.