Help me uphold my promise to Yvette Nicole Brown and let's get NBC to realize that Isaiah Mustafa needs to be cast as Shirley's love interest on 'Community'! Join the Facebook campaign now!

This isn’t exactly news coming out of Comic-Con, but it’s a funny little story. Well, to me it is anyway.

The night before the panel and press room for Community, NBC had a little appreciation party at one of the local hotels that I was lucky enough to be invited to. Most of the cast of Community was there, as well as some folks from Chuck, The Cape and Outsourced. Though some of these parties only last a few hours, I usually love them because it’s a chance to talk to those involved with these shows in a relaxed atmosphere. I usually do not carry a recorder to them, because I’ve noticed the actors usually switch into “I’m being interviewed” mode, and then it’s all work and no fun.

One of the people I got to talking to was Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley Bennett on NBC’s Community. A question that came up from someone about when we’d finally see Yvette’s ex-husband or, better yet, when she would get a love interest now that Jeff has kissed all of the female leads!

As it turns out, Yvette has a short wish list of guys she’d love to play her love interest, but one of them stood out from the rest: Isaiah Mustafa, the “Old Spice guy.” He has a brand-spankin’-new contract with NBC, and he’ll be in a small guest role on Chuck next season, but that doesn’t mean he can’t guest somewhere else on the same network!

So, I made Yvette a promise: during the Community panel the next day, I would make my way to the audience microphone and tell the entire panel that they need to cast Mustafa as Shirley’s love interest next season. She got Shirley-like excited, made me pinky swear (seriously), and I had my mission.

Toward the end of the panel the next day, I got as close to the seats near the microphone as I could. There was nobody standing in line for it, so I knew I was set. However, when the audience was invited to ask questions, I saw a hidden horror. It turns out that there was a line about 30 people long, but they were all sitting in the aisle. My pinky promise was foiled!

So, I’m going to try to make it up to Yvette now. Because the Betty White Facebook campaign for SNL went so well, I’m going to give that a shot. I’ve created a Facebook page called “Isaiah Mustafa for Community’s Shirley Bennett.” All you need to do is make yourself a fan of the page (below or on that link) and tell your friends. Post it to Twitter! Post it to Facebook! I … no WE owe it to Yvette Nicole Brown to make this dream a reality, dammit! Who’s with me?

Photo Credit: NBC, Old Spice