(AP)

The United States will have a female president next year — on the Fox TV series 24.

Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones will play President Allison Taylor when the show about the exploits of counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returns in January for Season 7, the network announced Sunday.

Jones’ term will coincide with Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid, but Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Liguori said there will be no intersection between fiction and real-world politics.

“It’s a dramatic decision. The president is a very important piece of 24,” Liguori told The Associated Press. “We’ve had a broad array of presidents on the show; why not a female president?”

The series has been an Oval Office ground-breaker before, with Dennis Haysbert playing President Palmer, the first black president.

Jones, winner of best-actress Tony Awards for The Heiress and Doubt, has appeared in films including Ocean’s Twelve and The Perfect Storm and has guest-starred on TV shows including the White House drama The West Wing.

Liguori and newly appointed Fox programming chief Kevin Reilly appeared Sunday at the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association.

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