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Ugly Betty star Vanessa Williams is to join The Good Wife in a recurring role for the drama's seventh season.

She will play "successful, self-made businesswoman" Courtney Boalt, who has a mutual attraction with Alan Cumming's slippery spin doctor, Eli Gold.

Producers said they "couldn't be more excited" about her joining the show.

The casting comes a week after Williams received a public apology from the Miss America pageant, 32 years after she was forced to hand back her title.

She was named its first African-American winner in 1983, but resigned months later after nude photos of her were published in Penthouse magazine, without her consent.

'Top of the list'

Williams' character on The Good Wife will be introduced as a potential supporter of Peter Florrick's presidential campaign, before becoming romantically interested in Gold.

Producers said they were looking forward to seeing Williams and Scottish star Cumming on screen together.

"There are very few names you can put side-by-side that make you laugh," said executive producers Robert and Michelle King, in a statement from CBS.

"Alan Cumming and Vanessa Williams are at the top of that list."

The Good Wife, which returns to US network CBS on 4 October, airs on More 4 in the UK.

Williams' previous TV roles include Ugly Betty's scheming, self-obsessed former supermodel Wilhelmina Slater and Renee Perry in Desperate Housewives.

As a singer, she had a huge hit in 1992 with the ballad Save the Best for Last, and earned a Golden Globe, a Grammy and an Oscar for her recording of Colours of the Wind from Disney's Pochahontas soundtrack.