Broadway star Sutton Foster is headed to TV

Television giveth and television taketh.

Just as NBC is putting a spotlight on Broadway by making it the setting for its new series "Smash," ABC Family is luring away one of theater's brightest musical stars, Sutton Foster.

The Tony Award winner for "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and the current revival of "Anything Goes" will star in a series for the cable channel that starts filming this spring.

In "Bunheads" -- well, that's what they're calling it for now, anyway -- she'll play a Las Vegas showgirl who moves to her new husband's hometown and goes to work in her mother-in-law's dance school. The executive producer is Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of the late "Gilmore Girls."

The channel's audience "is going to fall in love with Sutton Foster the same way Broadway has," said Kate Juergens, ABC Family's executive vice president of original programming and development.

Foster has also starred in the Broadway musicals "Young Frankenstein," "Shrek: The Musical" and "Little Women." Her theater lore in Los Angeles stems in part from her performance as the ingenue in "The Drowsy Chaperone" before that show went to New York. Although she fractured an arm during rehearsals, she not only opened the show but delighted audiences with one-armed cartwheels.

There was no immediate word from Roundabout Theatre Company about when Foster would be leaving "Anything Goes" or who might replace her. Stephanie J. Block filled in for her for three weeks in November.

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-- Lee Margulies

Photo: Joel Grey and Sutton Foster in "Anything Goes." Credit: Joan Marcus