Jimmy Smits lured by rum to CBS family drama

By Nellie Andreeva

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jimmy Smits has signed to star in an untitled CBS drama series about a powerful Latin American family of rum merchants in south Florida.

The former star of "NYPD Blue" and "The West Wing" will also executive produce the project, which was previously known as "Los Duques." He will play Alex Vega, an outsider who has been given control of Duque Rum by the Duques' ailing patriarch.

Landing Smits is a major coup for CBS, which, along with the other broadcast networks, has been trying for years to woo Smits to do a pilot. CBS came close in 2002 with the pilot for "CSI: Miami," which went to Smits' "NYPD Blue" predecessor David Caruso.

Additionally, Smits' El Sendero Prods. has set up two projects, a drama from filmmaker Todd Robinson at FX and a miniseries from Gregory Nava at ABC.

"The Inside," set up at FX, centers on a former Special Forces operative who agrees to give up his identity and family to go undercover and infiltrate a dangerous drug cartel.

Robinson, to whom Smits reached out after seeing his upcoming feature "Lonely Hearts," will pen the script and executive produce with Smits.

The second project is described as an epic miniseries about U.S. immigration told through interconnected stories to be written and directed by Nava. The miniseries reunites Smits with Nava, who directed him in the 1995 feature "My Family/Mi Familia."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter