Jennifer Love Hewitt Talks Return to Small Screen With ‘The Client List’

Can you believe former Party of Five star Jennifer Love Hewitt is 33?

After a lengthy stint on the surprisingly watchable The Ghost Whisperer, Hewitt is heading back to a TV series, this time one based off her 2010 Lifetime film The Client List. In the movie, Hewitt portrays a struggling young mother of three who is forced to turn to prostitution to save her family from foreclosure.

Because it is a Lifetime movie, the woman’s life is soon in shambles, she becomes addicted to drugs, and her husband moves away with her kids. (It would have totally been a Lifetime coup if the husband then sold the babies on the black market like in the Winnie Cooper Trilogy.)

Interestingly, the TV version is basically the same tale, but instead of the inevitable comeuppance at the end where the woman is punished for her slatternly ways, the show instead just rejiggers the whole tale to portray the mom trying to balance her life as a busy working mom with being a hooker on the side.

Lifetime’s Nancy Dubuc commented when the project was announced that the series was intended to titillate viewers and that the network was excited to work with Hewitt again:

“Beloved by viewers, Jennifer Love Hewitt is an amazing talent on and off the screen and we are very excited about continuing our relationship with her on The Client List. This project falls in line with our strategy to expand Lifetime’s slate with unapologetic programming that will surprise audiences.”

In a recent interview, Jennifer Love says that she feels a lot of women in America can relate to the character of Riley on The Client List:

“Riley is a single mom whose been left by her husband. [The audience] will get to know different clients and the people that come in and out of the spa every week. You’ll get to see more about her being a mom and how she handles having a double-life. [It] has a certain amount of reality to it.”

She continues:

“The family is facing economic hardship, which is a very real situation happening in a lot of families in a lot of places in the United States and all over the world right now. So I think that part of it is real. I think her being a single mom with two kids is real.”

Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Client List premieres Sunday, April 8th at 10PM on Lifetime.