Ashanti To Report For Duty On 'Army Wives'

Ashanti is not letting her recent failures in music keep her down, instead the singer is making smart moves and continuing to elevate her brand. As a result, the singer has joined the cast of the Lifetime drama 'Army Wives'.

The Grammy winner will make her debut as a series regular on the show's seventh season, which will feature 13 episodes and this is just the latest move the singer has taken to beef up her resume outside of music. Earlier this year, she announced that she was teaming with Fuse to executive produce and co-anchor an informative music new show, aptly entitled 'Fuse News'.

However, the 'Foolish' star seems poised to re-enter the scripted world first and will play a character completely different from the few roles she has taken on in the past. According to the release, she will play Latasha Durant, "an optimistic mother of three, a sexy, fun woman who knows how to keep a husband and how to keep him in line".

The Hollywood Reporter: Ashanti, Torrey DeVitto and Elle McLemore are reporting for duty on Army Wives.

The trio have booked series regular roles on the upcoming seventh season of the Lifetime drama, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Singer-songwriter-producer-actress Ashanti, whose credits include Resident Evil: Extinction, John Tucker Must Die and Coach Carter, will make her series regular debut as Latasha Durant, an optimistic mother of three: 11-year-old Quincy Jr. (known as Deuce), daughter Nyah, 8, and Gabe, 6, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis. Latasha is described as a survivor with no self-pity who is determined to wrench all the joy out of life that she can. She's a sexy, fun woman who knows how to keep a husband -- and keep him in line.

DeVitto will play Maggie Hall, an ex-Army Airborne-turned-truck driver. She's sexy and smart with an edge and has a blue-collar upbringing in Saginaw, Mich., where the economy went south -- along with her marriage. Leaving her deadbeat husband and taking her son Tanner, 10, with her, she joined the Army to start over and found love again and married Eddie, a staff sergeant who has a 14-year-old daughter. Maggie left the Army in order to devote herself to being a wife and mother, with Eddie recently transferred to Joint Base Marshall Bring.

McLemore, who starred on Broadway's Bring It On and guest starred on The Middle and The Suite Life on Deck, will play Holly Gordon, a wide-eyed, bespectacled farm girl from Effingham, Ill., who's newly married to a soldier and homesick, having never been more than 100 miles from home. She's a pretty girl who doesn't know it who's further described as sweet, honest and in need of friends in order to make it through her husband's deployment.

Army Wives, which was renewed in September, will return with a major shake-up for its seventh season with star Kim Delaney exiting the drama and co-star Sally Pressman recurring as the series will confront the aftermath of the deadly plane crash featured in its sixth-season finale.

Ashanti is repped by Media Artists Group and Universal Attractions. DeVitto, who recurs on both Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars, is with APA, Insight and Hansen Jacobson and next appears in Lifetime's holiday movie The Real St. Nick (set for Dec. 15). McLemore is with Paradigm and Morris Yorn.