Small Screen: Channel 4 Hires First Director Of Inclusion; Ava DuVernay To Direct Series Finale Of 'Queen Sugar'; 'Iyanu: Child of Wonder' Animated Series Greenlit; New 'Black Mirror' Cast Announced
Marcia Williams - Channel 4
Broadcast: Chicago Med original cast member Marlyne Barrett has signed a new, multi-year deal to remain on the NBC drama from Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television. The Brooklyn-born Haitian-American plays Nurse Maggie Lockwood and is about to begin her eighth season with other original cast members S. Epatha Merkerson, Oliver Platt, Nick Gehlfuss, and Brian Tee.
U.K. public service broadcaster Channel 4 has tapped Marcia Williams as its first director of inclusion. Williams is currently the director of diversity, inclusion, and talent for the government department Transport of London and in August will leave to head The 4Inclusion team and sit on Channel 4’s executive management board, overseeing the channel’s inclusion and diversity strategy.
Tony Revolori - David Livingston / Stringer
Cable: Queen Sugar creator and executive producer Ava DuVernay will direct the final episode of the OWN series. Duvernay, who directed the first two episodes of the series, has also been serving as one of the show’s writers and was announced in a list of other directors for the seventh (and last) season including Kat Candler, Stacey Muhammad, Patricia Cardoso, Aurora Guerrero and DeMane Davis, and showrunner Shaz Bennett. Queen Sugar is based on the book by Natalie Baszile about a sugarcane farm run by the three Bordelon siblings after the untimely death of their father and stars Rutina Wesley, Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe, Nicholas L. Ashe, Omar Dorsey, Tina Lifford, Bianca Lawson, Henry G. Sanders, and Tammy Townsend. Produced for OWN by DuVernay’s Array Filmworks and Harpo Films in association with Warner Bros. Television, the final season of Queen Sugar will air on the network this fall.
Barkhad Abdi, who was nominated for an Oscar for his very first role as Somali pirate Muse opposite Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, has been cast alongside Corbin Bernsen (LA Law, Psych) and Constance Shulman (Doug, Orange Is The New Black) in an upcoming Showtime comedy series titled The Curse. Co-created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, who will also executive produce and star with actress Emma Stone, the series focuses on an allegedly cursed married couple as they try to conceive a child while co-starring on a new HGTV show. The Curse was picked up to series back in December 2020 and will be produced by A24.
Phoebe Robinson, the creator, star, and executive producer of the Freeform comedy series Everything’s Trash has extended her overall deal with ABC Signature along with series showrunner and executive producer Jonathan Groff. Robinson will continue to develop and produce projects across all Disney platforms under her Tiny Productions banner. Based on Robinson’s essay collection Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay, the series premiered on Freeform on July 13th and stars Robinson as a broke 30-something podcast star living in Brooklyn with a cast that includes Jordan Carlos, Toccarra Cash, Nneka Okafor, and Moses Storm.
The Nickelodeon animated series Monster High has added Tony Revolori (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Gabrielle Nevaeh Green (That Girl Lay Lay), and Kausar Mohammed (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous) among others to its cast ahead of the show’s fall premiere. Monster High follows the teenage children of famous monsters, which includes Deuce Gorgon (Revolori), the son of Medusa and Lyra; half-human and half-werewolf Clawdeen Wolf (Green); and mummy monster Cleo De Nile (Mohammed) as they navigate high school within the monster world.
Natasha Behnam - Paul Archuleta
Streaming: HBO Max and Cartoon Network have greenlit an animated adaption of the Dark Horse Comics/YouNeek Studios graphic novel Iyanu: Child Of Wonder. It’s the story of a teenage orphan in the magical kingdom of Yorubaland, written by Nigerian author and filmmaker Roye Okupe and based on the real history and mythology of the Yoruba people of West Africa. Okupe will write and direct multiple episodes of the series, which is being financed and overseen by Black-owned animation studio Lion Forge Animation, with the head of production Saxton Moore (Rise Up, Sing Out) serving as supervising director. According to Lion Forge’s founder David Steward II, “the authenticity of the ‘Iyanu’ story means everything to us and aligns perfectly with our mission to create and deliver inclusive content to global audiences.”
In other HBO Max news, Insecure’s Christine Elmore is set to lead the new drama series The Girl On The Bus opposite Melissa Benoist (Supergirl) and Natasha Behnam (Mayans M.C.). The three women play competing journalists covering a presidential campaign in the series inspired by a chapter in writer Amy Chozick’s book Chasing Hillary. Elmore will play the role of Kimberlyn Kendrick, an Ivy League-educated Reagan Republican and campaign reporter for Liberty News.
AppleTV+ has announced that Malcolm Barrett, Alexis Louder, Amirah Vann, and Jared Abrahamson have been added to the cast of the upcoming drama The Changeling starring LaKeith Stanfield. Based on the best-selling urban fantasy/horror novel by author Victor LaValle, the new series is being adapted by Venom writer Kelly Marcel (who also serves as showrunner) and directed by Melina Matsoukas, notably of Master Of None, Insecure, and Queen & Slim.
Israeli Actress Shira Haas will star in the Netflix adaptation of the eight-issue graphic novel series Bodies by Si Spencer as one of four detectives trying to solve murders in different time periods in the city of London. Also in the cast are Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire), Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (The Queen’s Gambit), Kyle Soller (The Inheritance), and Amaka Okafor (The Responder). British screenwriter Paul Tomalin is spearheading the adaptation with a creative team that includes director Haolu Wang (Doctor Who) and actor/writer Danusia Samal (The Great).
Netflix has also released the cast for three episodes of the newest season of the popular anthology series Black Mirror currently in production. Among the names dropped for the show’s sixth season is Atlanta’s Zazie Beetz, I May Destroy You’s Paapa Essiedu, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier’s Danny Ramirez, and We Are Lady Parts’ Anjana Vasan. The show’s fifth season premiered back in 2019 and the new season will be the first since creator Charlie Brooker and partner Annabel Jones moved the show from House of Tomorrow to new production company Broke and Bones.
It’s been reported that Paramount+ is developing a K-Pop dramedy by writer Diana Snyder Ritter, executive producer Jenny Lee, with South Korean production company CJ Entertainment and Paramount Television Studios. The series Dee Takes Seoul, about a Philly girl transplanted to Seoul, South Korea to choreograph for a K-Pop girl group, is written by Snyder Ritter with Lee as showrunner, who previously worked together on the Freeform series Young & Hungry.
Christopher Chung - David M. Benett
Industry: Christopher Chung of the Apple TV+ spy series Slow Horses has signed with The Artists Partnership in the U.K. for representation. In addition to Slow Horses, which was just renewed for a third and fourth season, Chung appeared in the BBC drama Waterloo Road and in a stage in Shakespeare’s Globe’s 2018 production of Romeo And Juliet. He is also represented by More/Medavoy Management in the U.S.
Kat Graham, known for being the first African American to voice the role of April O’Neill on Nickelodeon’s Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has signed with UTA for representation in all areas. The actor, musician, and ambassador for Rotary International, the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, and cosmetics company L’Oreal, will continue to be represented by 3 Arts Entertainment and attorney Roger Goff.
Writer Aadrita Mukerji has signed an overall deal with Universal Television to write, develop and produce projects across all platforms, including the NBC reboot of Quantum Leap, which she will also co-executive produce. Originally from Kolkata, India, her credits include writing for the CBS television series Scorpion, executive story editor of The CW’s Supergirl, and producer on both NBC’s The Endgame and Amazon’s Reacher.
Slumdog Millionaire’s Frieda Pinto is developing a television series based on Hillary Clinton chief of staff Huma Abedin’s memoir Both/And: A Life In Any Worlds with Canadian entertainment company Entertainment One through Freebird Films’ first-look deal there. Pinto started the production company Freebird Films with producing partner Emily Verellen Strom “to develop and produce stories celebrating diversity and uplifting the work and lives of intrepid women.” Abedin’s 2021 book chronicles her life and political career from intern to Vice Chair of Hillary for America in 2016, including her ex-husband Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal.