Tony Roberts Boards ABC's DIRTY DANCING Remake

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tony Roberts is the latest star to join ABC's upcoming three-hour remake of the hit film DIRTY DANCING.

Roberts will play Max, "the owner of Kellerman's - a 1960's Catskills Mountains resort - and a longtime friend of the Housemans. With a mixture of Borscht Belt humor and quick wit, Max has been catering to the same Jewish families for decades, offering them a summer filled with games, activities, singing and dancing, and the possibility of a little romance. A tough-minded businessman who's pulled his resort through hard times, Max is grooming his grandson Neil to take over one day, because he knows that times are changing and maybe he's too rigid to change with them."

The update of the 1987 blockbuster film will center on Baby, an innocent young woman in the early 1960s who vacations with her affluent parents and siblings in the Catskills and falls for Johnny, the resort's charismatic dance instructor and leader of the working-class entertainment staff.

As BWW previously reported, Billy Dee Williams, Sarah Hyland, Nicole Scherzinger, Katey Sagal, Trevor Einhorn, Debra Messing and Beau "Casper" Smart have previously signed on for the project, set to begin filming this week in North Carolina.

Tony Roberts starred on Broadway in The Royal Family, Xanadu, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Victor, Victoria, Cabaret, The Sisters Rosensweig, They're Playing Our Song, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Sugar, How Now, Dow Jones, Promises, Promises, Play It Again, Sam, and more than a dozen others. He has received two Tony Award nominations, and was the winner of the Critic's Poll Award for his performance in Promises, Promises in London. He also starred in both the original and the recent Broadway revival of Barefoot in the Park. He can be seen on screen in Annie Hall, Play It Again, Sam, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and many others. His television work includes Arthur Miller's The American Clock, Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, The Carol Burnett Show, and his own series for NBC: Rosetti & Ryan.