Small Screen: Mehcad Brooks Joins ‘Law & Order’; Michelle Yeoh To Star In Netflix’s ‘The Brothers Sun’; Watch The Teaser Trailer For Issa Rae’s ‘Rap Sh!t’
Mehcad Brooks - Johnny Nunez
Broadcast: Actor Mehcad Brooks is joining the 2022-2023 season of NBC’s revival of Law & Order. There are no reported details about his character other than he’ll be playing a detective to purportedly take the place of Detective Bernard played by Anthony Anderson, who left the show after returning for one season. Though a return date for the crime procedural has not been announced, the new season will start sometime in the fall and air in a three-hour programming block that will include its spinoffs Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Danielle Deadwyler - Demimonde/HBO
Cable: The STARZ show P-Valley recently had its second season premiere in Los Angeles after an almost two-year hiatus. According to creator Katori Hall, both the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial justice protests that proceeded from the murder of George Floyd have been incorporated into the new season’s storylines, which take place in the year 2020. P-Valley tells the story of the employees of a Mississippi strip club called The Pynk, which Hall describes as the “the best place to dig in very specifically to what has been a universal experience for everyone around the world,” and also said she felt it would be “irresponsible” to not address the protests specifically, adding “I just really wanted to pay homage to our struggle and honor what we went through, that experience, by holding up a mirror and saying, ‘I see you. I see what we’ve gone through, and our story is important.’ So this is actually a way for us to recognize and move forward and possibly heal.” The second season will continue to highlight music from Southern musicians, including Houston native Megan Thee Stallion.
The Danielle Deadwyler-led show Demimonde from J.J. Abrams has been canceled by HBO. The premium cable network had won the show after a bidding war with Apple back in 2018 and Deadwyler (already seen on HBO in Watchmen and in HBO Max’s Station Eleven) had been announced to star this April. The actress was cast as Olive Reed, a mother, and scientist who falls into a coma after a devastating car crash and is transported into a dark, fantastical world that she must navigate to reunite with her family. The show is currently being shopped to other streamers, including Apple, however, it reportedly comes with an over $200 million price tag.
Streaming: Michelle Yeoh will star in the upcoming Netflix series by Brad Falchuk (Glee, Pose, American Horror Story) and Byron Wu (The Getaway) titled The Brothers Sun, a dark dramedy that boasts an all-Asian cast and an all-Asian writers room. The Everything Everywhere All At Once actress is set to play Eileen “Mama” Sun, a Taiwanese mother who moves to LA to build a new life with her youngest son, played by Sam Song Li (Better Call Saul). Justin Chien (Two Sides) plays her oldest son, a Taipei gangster who shows up to protect them after his crime boss father is mysteriously murdered. The cast also includes Highdee Kuan (This Is Us), Joon Lee (Dated), Alice Hewkin (Sex Education), Jon Xue Zhang (Eternals), Jenny Yang (Busy Tonight), Madison Hu (The Boogeyman), and Rodney To (Parks and Recreation).
HBO Max has dropped a teaser trailer for Issa Rae’s new series Rap Sh!t about two friends in Miami named Shawna and Mia (played by Aida Osman and KaMillion, respectively) who are trying to make it as a rap duo. Rae executive produces the series (and wrote the premiere episode) with Syreeta Singleton. The two also co-wrote Rap Sh!t’s season finale and Singleton is serving as showrunner. The hip-hop artists of City Girls, Yung Miami (born Caresha Romeka Brownlee) and JT (born Jatavia Shakara Johnson) are also co-executive producers along with Montrel McKay and Sara Rastogi for HOORAE, Jonathan Berry, and Dave Becky for 3 Arts Entertainment, Deniese Davis, as well as Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas for Quality Control Films. The eight-episode season of Rap Sh!t will stream on HBO Max starting July 21st.
Station Eleven’s Andy McQueen is joining the cast of the Peacock drama Mrs. Davis created by Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen) and Tara Hernandez (The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon). He will be appearing alongside actors Jake McDorman, Betty Gilpin, Ben Chaplin, and Margot Martindale on the sci-fi series that’s being described as “an exploration of faith vs technology and an epic battle of biblical and binary proportions.”
Manny Montana - Amanda Edwards / Stringer
Manny Montana has been cast in the Marvel Studios live-action series Ironheart on Disney+. He’ll join star Dominique Thorne (If Beale Street Could Talk) and cast members Anthony Ramos (Into The Heights) and Lyric Ross (This Is Us). Ironheart is based on the comic book created in 2016 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato and tells the story of Riri Williams (Thorne), a 15-year-old black inventor who builds her own Iron Man suit by reverse-engineering Tony Stark’s design. No details have been revealed about Montana’s character and reps for Marvel have declined to comment.
It was announced during the Netflix Animation Showcase at the Annecy International Film Festival that the animated series Entergalactic, created by Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and executive produced by Kenya Barris (creator of Black*ish), will premiere on the streaming service on September 30th. The show centers around two young New York artists, Jabari (voiced by Mescudi) and his new neighbor Meadow (voiced by voiced by “Love Life’s” Jessica Williams). Timothée Chalamet, rappers Ty Dolla $ign and 070 Shake, Laura Harrier, Vanessa Hudgens, Christopher Abbott, Keith David, Jaden Smith, Teyana Taylor, Arturo Castro, and Macaulay Culkin round out the rest of Entergalactic’s cast. Mescudi and Barris executive produce the series with Karina Manashil and Dennis Cummings for Mad Solar Productions, the show’s director Fletcher Moules, and writers Ian Edelman and Maurice Williams.
Comedian Kevin Hart is developing a half-hour comedy series for Peacock with Dan Levy (The Goldbergs, How I Met Your Father). The series is called True To Size and is inspired by Hart’s own experience as a sneaker salesman. Hart will serve as executive producer with Levy (who’s also the showrunner and writer), alongside Doug Robinson, Bryan Smiley, and Mike Stein. The Sony Pictures Television show will be set in Philadelphia in 1998 when 20-year-old Kevin took the life-changing job in a mall sneaker shop that would ultimately launch his career in stand-up comedy.
The first trailer for Maya Rudolph’s new AppleTV+ comedy Loot was released earlier this month. The Universal Television show is the new creation from Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, both of Forever and Parks and Recreation, and stars Rudolph as Molly Novak, “the most famous cheated-on woman on the planet” who turns to philanthropy following a very public divorce from her adulterous billionaire husband (played by Adam Scott). The cast also features Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nat Faxon, Joel Kim Booster, and Ron Funches. The series’ first three episodes will be released on June 24th and then one episode every Friday. The show is executive produced by Rudolph, Natasha Lyonne, and Danielle Renfrew Behrens through their company Animal Pictures, along with Dave Becky of 3 Arts.
Cynthia Bailey, formerly of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Celebrity Big Brother, has embarked on a new acting career and will be seen in the second season of the AllBlk series Terror Lake Drive premiering June 23rd. Bailey left the long-running Bravo reality show in 2021 after eleven years and has also launched her own line of clothing and accessories called CB Vior. It was started in Atlanta and a branch recently opened at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, where she now lives with her husband Mike Hill. Bailey also appeared in the Lifetime movie Cruel Instruction and has just completed shooting a movie for BET+.
Anjali Midha - Diesel Labs
Industry: Actress Alexandra Shipp and Diesel Labs co-founder and CEO Anjali Midha are among the long list of speakers announced for the Women in Entertainment Summit on June 22 in Los Angeles. The event, which is taking place for the first time since 2019, was co-founded by Renee Rossi (founder of communications consultants Relativity Ventures) and Gretchen McCourt (COO of MoviePass) and is dedicated to “celebrating the empowerment of women in all areas of the entertainment industry.” The full schedule and list of speakers can be found on the WIE website.