Monk, Tony Shalhoub, 'Mr. Monk & The Game Show', (Season 3), 2002 Vivian Zink/USA Network/Courtesy Everett Collection Logo text The Einstein family tree is really filling in.
Tony Shalhoub has been cast as a recurring guest star on CBS‘ new series Einstein. He’ll play Jack Einstein, the father of Matthew Gray Gubler’s (Criminal Minds) character Lewis Einstein. Lewis, the protagonist on the series, is Albert Einstein’s great-grandson, which makes Shalhoub’s character the grandson. The casting reunites Shalhoub with his Monk creative team Andy Breckman and Randy Zisk, who executive produce Einstein.
Einstein follows Gubler’s “brilliant but directionless” descendant of the great genius, who “spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor until his bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law,” per the logline. Lewis is soon “pressed into service helping a local police detective (Melissa Fumero) solve her most puzzling cases.” In a re-casting, Fumero, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine alum, is back to playing detective on broadcast television. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays her their boss, Capt. Frost.
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In addition to Breckman and Zisk, Michael Rauch, Tariq Jalil, Rose Hughes, Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia and Laura Beetz executive produce Einstein. Gubler is a producer. Einstein is a CBS Studios production.
Einstein was already supposed to have premiered. In April 2025, CBS chose to push the series out by one season — officially, the 2025-26 calendar was too crowded, the network said. It was then that Rosa Salazar dropped out of the detective role, making room for Fumero. So, surely, Einstein will premiere this fall, right? Not quite, Einsteins: CBS is holding the comedic procedural until midseason, so it still does not have an actual debut date.
Shalhoub has had a strong and versatile career, but he is undeniably best knock as either Adrian Monk of Monk, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three Primetime Emmy Awards, or as Abe Weissman in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Shalhoub, who played the title character’s (Rachel Brosnahan) dad, won another Emmy for that show.
Monk ran from 2002-2009 on USA Network; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel streamed from 2017-2023 on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Shalhoub is repped by CAA.
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