Small Screen: Nichelle Nichols, 'Star Trek's' Lt. Uhura Dies At 89; Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal Reunite For ‘La Máquina’; Hulu Drops Trailer for Tyson Biopic 'Mike'
Harry Shum Jr. - SXSW
Broadcast: ABC’s breakout hit Abbott Elementary has earned a full 22-episode season order for its second season. The mid-season replacement from the creator, executive producer, and star Quinta Brunson received the early renewal in March of this year and season 2 is set to premiere on Wednesday, September 21st. This announcement comes after the show received an impressive seven Primetime Emmy nominations including, Outstanding Comedy Series, both Lead Actress and Writing for Brunson, and Supporting nods for three of its actors: Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, and Sheryl Lee Ralph. It was also announced that William Stanford Davis, who plays Abbott Elementary custodian Mr. Johnson, has been promoted to series regular.
Benjamin Levy Aguilar, who plays rookie Dante Torres on NBC’s Chicago P.D. has been promoted to series regular for the show’s tenth season. The Guatemalan-born Aguilar made his debut as Torres in the episode titled “New Guard” from the show’s ninth season, after previously appearing on the season premiere of Season 7 as a character named Franco Chavaro. Season 10 of Chicago P.D. is set to premiere on September 21st following Dick Wolf’s other popular Chicago dramas Chicago Med and Chicago Fire.
Former Glee actor Harry Shum Jr. is joining the cast of ABC’s long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy for its upcoming 19th season. Shum is one of five new cast members along with Alexis Floyd (Inventing Anna), Niko Terho (The Thing About Harry), Midori Francis (Dash & Lily), and Adelaide Kane (SEAL Team) that are all playing first-year residents at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital. A talented dancer and choreographer, Shum will portray Daniel “Blue” Kwan in the Shondaland series, a character described as “generous by nature, competitive to a fault, naturally gifted and used to winning at everything.”
Journalist and co-host of The Talk Natalie Morales will have a recurring role on the CBS daytime soap The Young And The Restless as investigative reporter Talia Morgan. The former Today show host says she’s been having fun playing opposite actresses Susan Walters, Melody Thomas Scott, and Michelle Stafford. Her first episode on the show airs on August 17th.
Predo Pascal - Alberto E. Rodriguez / Stringer
Cable: It was announced on the last day of San Diego Comic-Con that FX has renewed the motorcycle drama Mayans M.C. for a fifth season. The Sons of Anarchy spinoff starring JD Pardo, Edward James Olmos, Danny Pino, Carla Baratta, Raoul Max Trujillo, Emilio Rivera, Michael Irby, Frankie Loyal, Joseph Lucero, and Vincent Vargas will continue to be produced by Disney’s 20th Television which also signed a new overall deal with the show’s co-creator and executive producer Elgin James.
Another FX favorite is finally getting a premiere date. The fourth and final season of Donald Glover’s Atlanta will premiere in September, a mere four months after the airing of the finale of Season 3. The fourth season will see the main characters returning home from Europe to Atlanta as is illustrated by the show’s very surreal teaser recently released by FX. It was recently nominated for three more Emmy including Best Actor for Glover and Best Directing for Hiro Murai.
Pedro Pascal is set to star with Stranger Things’ David Harbour in a limited series for HBO titled My Dentist’s Murder Trial. Currently, in development, the show is inspired by the New Yorker article “My Dentist’s Murder Trial: Adultery, False Identities, and a Lethal Sedation,” written by James Lasdun about the true story of Dr. Gilberto Nunezc and his indictment for the murder of his friend Thomas Kolman. Pascal will also executive produce along with Harbour, writer/director Steve Conrad, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch, Taylor Latham, Bruce Terris, Molly Allen, James Lasdun, and MGM Television.
From Top Left to right: Sandra Oh, Geogre Takei, Ming-Na Wen, James Hong, Bowen Yang, B.D. Wong, Randall Park, and Izaac Wang.
Streaming: Mexican acting duo Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, who first made a splash on screen together in Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, are teaming up once again as producers and stars of the upcoming Spanish-language Hulu limited series La Máquina. According to the longline, the series follows an aging boxer (played by Bernal) whose crafty manager (played by Luna) secures him one last shot at a title. But to make it to fight night, they must navigate a mysterious underworld force. Playwright and Daredevil scribe Marco Ramirez will serve as showrunner with Gabriel Ripstein directing. The Searchlight Television show also has Gerardo Gatica, Leandro Halperin, and Adam Fishbach onboard as producers.
Hulu has officially released the trailer for its upcoming limited series Mike, with Moonlight star Trevante Rhodes in the title role as controversial boxer Mike Tyson. The eight-episode series also stars Laura Harrier as Robin Givens, Li Eubanks as Tyson accuser Desiree Washington, and Russell Hornsby as promoter Don King. Writer Steven Rogers is the creator and executive producer with the rest of the team for I, Tonya, along with showrunner Karen Gist, Rhodes, Entertainment 360’s Darin Friedman, Anthony Hemingway, Anthony Sparks, and Samantha Corbin-Miller.
Netflix has acquired the global rights outside the U.K. and Ireland for the BBC One drama Champion. The show, which is currently in production, is the first TV project from the award-winning author of Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams. It centers around the recently released from prison Bosco Champion, a South London rapper newly determined to dominate the music industry until he discovers his younger sister Vita is also pursuing a music career with the help of one of his rivals. Carty-Williams calls Champion “a celebration of Black music and of a Black family, however, fragmented that family might be” and the show will feature original music written by UK musicians and a lead cast that includes Malcolm Kamulete, Nadine Marshall, Ray Fearon, Jo Martin, and television newcomers Déja J Bowens and Ray BLK.
Amandla Stenberg has officially been announced as the lead in the new Star Wars series The Acolyte. Set a full century before the events of the first Star Wars prequel, The Acolyte takes place during a peak time for the High Republic, when the Sith were believed to have been all but eradicated. Russia Doll’s co-creator Lesley Headlund is serving as showrunner and developing the series with Lucasfilm’s Rayne Roberts. The show will launch on Disney+ but no premiere date has been announced.
An animated prequel series about the Gremlins is coming to HBO Max next year and later to Cartoon Network. Set in 1920’s Shanghai, the series sports an all-star Asian American voice cast consisting of Ming-Na Wen, James Hong, B.D. Wong, Sandra Oh, Randall Park, George Takei, Bowen Yang, and Izaac Wang. Gremlins original star Zach Galligan will also make an appearance on the show, although not as his character Billy.
From Top Left to Right: Tauren Blacque - NBC, Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer, Nichelle Nichols - Frank Micelotta , Yoko Shimada - Koichi Kamoshida, Mary Alice - Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer
Industry: Trailblazing actress Nichelle Nichols, best known for her breakout role as communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek television series, has passed away at age 85. Born In Robbins, IL, Nichols began her acting career in musical theatre, performing in productions of Kicks And Co, Carmen Jones, and Porgy And Bess before moving to Los Angeles, where she was given a role in the sci-fi series (a role she herself named after a book she was reading called Uhuru, which is Swahili for ‘freedom’) by creator Gene Roddenberry. Though it was the first time a black woman was given a hefty role in a television series, she almost left the show after the first year to return to musical theatre when she was famously approached by self-proclaimed Trekkie Martin Luther King Jr, who convinced her to stay and continue being a role model to young African American girls. Nichols not only went on to portray Uhura for the show’s three seasons and six of its motion pictures, but she also became an important ambassador for NASA, recruiting female and African Americans into the space program, such as the first female astronaut Sally Ride and the first African American female astronaut Mae Jemison.
Taurean Blacque is best known for his role as Det. Neal Washington on all seven seasons of the acclaimed NBC cop show Hill Street Blues has passed away at the age of 82 following a brief illness. Blacque was also one of the lead cast members of the NBC soap opera Generations, the first American daytime soap to feature a Black family at its inception that sadly only ran from 1989 to 1990. He made several other television appearances in his career on such series as Sanford and Son, The Tony Randall Show, Charlie’s Angels, The Bob Newhart Show, Good Times, Taxi, and Dream On, but it was his portrayal of Washington on Hill Street Blues that earned him a Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Emmy nomination in 1982.
The television world also recently lost one of the stars of the 1980 miniseries Shōgun. Japanese actress Yoko Shimada, who won the Best Actress Golden Globe and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy, passed away at age 69 from complications of colorectal cancer. She played Mariko in Shōgun, a character based on a real-life member of the aristocratic Akechi family, Hosokawa Gracia, opposite star Richard Chamberlain. Some of her other TV credits included Hiromi Nohara in Kamen Rider (1971) and Yoko Sugita in We Are Youth (1974).
The African American television community lost another member as actress Mary Alice also passed away recently at age 85. The award-winning Broadway star of the original production of August Wilson’s Fences had a number of notable television credits, including dorm director Lettie Bostic on A Different World (1988), Oprah Winfrey’s mother on the miniseries The Women Of Brewster Place (1989), and the mother of Harold Perrineau Jr.’s Augustus Hill on Oz (2002), but it was her portrayal of Marguerite Peck on I’ll Fly Away in the early nineties that earned her back-to-back supporting Emmy nominations, an award she would win the second year. She last appeared on television in the Ving Rhames-led remake of Kojak in 2005.
Rodney Barnes, the writer, and producer of the hit series Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty has renewed his overall deal with HBO to develop, write, and produce shows in a variety of formats for the premium cable channel. Winning Time was also recently renewed for a second season while another of the show’s contributors, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who directed multiple episodes of the show’s first season, has also renewed her deal with HBO for additional two years and is now an executive producer on the show.
R&B singer Usher will executive produce a new Starlings Television series about the birth of the Jazz Age. Set in New Orleans, Storyville centers on five brothel madams fighting to control the red light district and, according to Usher, “is an epic tale sparked by the origins of the sound that inspired my career – a story that touches the nerve of social and cultural relevance today.” The show will be executive produced by Starlings TV President/EP Chris Philip and CEO Karine Martin, along with Usher, creators, and showrunners Bill Macdonald and Walt Becker, and Marcus Morton.
Holly Robinson Peete (Top Left), Jennifer Turner (bottom Left), Tara Duncan (Bottom Center), Tara DeVeaux (Bottom Right), Nikkie Love (Center Right), Ayo Davis (Top Right)
Earlier in the year, nexttv.com highlighted who it dubbed 2022’s Wonder Women of Los Angeles. Here are a few of the standouts:
Jennifer Turner is currently the VP of Sony Pictures Television’s TriStar Television Studio. She started out consulting on NBC’s The Blacklist and as SPT’s senior VP of scripted programming, she oversaw creative for shows including The Good Doctor, The Boys, and Woke. She described her vision for TriStar as “first and foremost, artist forward, super-premium, cinematic, innovative. And I would say as a part of innovation and telling new stories that would include diverse writers and talent, as well as stories that feature female protagonists.”
Tara DeVeaux is the chief marketing officer of the entertainment marketing agency Wild Card Creative Group and director of 3AM, its content studio for which she’s developed integrated campaigns, social media marketing, and creative content to entice consumers. In addition to launching the research division Insights@Wild Card to provide audience data to clients and help 3AM’s creatives understand what resonates with viewers, she’s also added a social media team, finds and recruits diverse talents, and mentors other women and people of color in the business.
As the president of Freeform and Onyx Collective, Tara Duncan recently oversaw the biggest series debut in Freeform's history (Cruel Summer) and previous to this position, Duncan had a hand in the development of other popular shows, such as Orange Is The New Black, The Killing, Narcos, and Bosch. Her golden touch will hopefully continue to build on Freeform’s youth-targeted brand and provide quality, diverse content for the one-year-old, Hulu-centric Onyx Collective, as well as opening the doors for other diverse voices to make their mark on the industry.
Former actor and model Nikki Love is now the senior VP of development and original production for ALLBLK (formerly Urban Movie Channel), the streaming service for Black TV and film owned by AMC Networks. Her role covers script development, production and post-production, and on-set executive for all original series. Some of her accomplishments include overseeing Craig Ross Jr.’s Monogamy, the Daytime Emmy nominee Stuck With You, Terror Lake Drive, For the Love of Jason, A Closer Look, and the new comedy, Millennials. She also participates in the company’s employee resource group VIBE (Vested Interest in Black Employees) and is part of the DEI Content Task Force.
Ayo Davis became the President of Disney Branded Television last September and now leads creative and operations across Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Junior, Disney Television Animation, and Disney Plus. Before that, she spent nearly two decades at Disney and ABC as an executive VP of talent and casting at ABC Entertainment and Disney Plus. She both drives the evolution of classic Disney properties while also launching new content across juggernauts Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm, vowing to continue to create storylines that “are full of magic and adventure and heart.”
Holly Robinson Peete, the actress best known for her television roles on 21 Jump Street and Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper (as well as being the daughter of Sesame Street’s Matt Robinson), recently signed a multi-picture deal with Hallmark Channel parent Crown Media Family Networks. She’ll be adding the title of executive producer to her resume and has commented “I love that Hallmark Channel looks to me as a content creator as somebody who has more to say than just the lines and really understands or values my input to the creative process.”