Whoopi Goldberg, D.L. Hughley starring in new CBS-NAACP programming
The new content unveiled Monday is the result of a production partnership that launched last year
CBS Studios and the NAACP provided details on Monday about the slate of Black-led content being developed in conjunction with the two parties’ production partnership, which officially launched a year ago.
The civil rights organization and the TV network tasked executive producer Sheila Ducksworth with leading their partnership team and developing more diverse programming back in Oct. 2020.
“This slate is highly indicative of the kind of fare that we’re looking to put forward, which is fresh and entertaining, with a strong point of view,” Ducksworth recently told Deadline. “We have been very fortunate to have several attachments that we think will really propel our projects in a big way.”
The five new shows, which have already been sold to various studios, include a Paramount+ reboot of the 1991 dramedy Soapdish with Whoopi Goldberg set to reprise her role as soap opera head writer Rose Schwartz. Jane the Virgin creator Jennie Snyder Urman serves as co-writer on the project, according to Deadline.
Fellow comedians D.L. Hughley and Earthquake will star separately in a pair of untitled autobiographical comedy series for Fox and CBS, the trade magazine reported.
Hughley’s show tells the real life-inspired tale of the comedian and radio show host as he balances his career with being a husband and father of an LGBTQ+ daughter, an autistic son living at home with his white girlfriend, and another shopaholic daughter with a penchant for using her dad’s credit card.
Earthquake’s CBS-acquired show centers on him juggling his comedy career, dating life and being a full-time father after his two kids move in with him.
Also in development are Construction, a Paramount+ drama inspired by Cheryl McKissack, the fifth-generation owner of the nation’s oldest Black woman-owned construction company, and Little Rock Nine, a project in the works for Apple TV+ and Kapital Entertainment.
The eight-part limited series tells the story of the nine Black children who integrated an Arkansas high school in 1957, per Deadline.
Ducksworth said her team has several more projects involving “big talent attachments” in the production pipeline.
“It’s representation at its best,” she told Deadline. “It’s showing different sides of life, different opinions, different types of people that there are, and that’s our goal for all of this: to have full inclusion of all different types of viewpoints in all that we do in a fun way.”
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. Download theGrio today!
