Netflix series Black Excellence to star Kenya Barris, Rashida Jones
Black Excellence, the newest series from Black-ish creator, Kenya Barris, will bring new life to the “family sitcom” and will star Barris himself.
Deadline has reported Kenya Barris and Rashida Jones will star in Barris’ upcoming single-camera comedy Black Excellence.
Previously, Deadline had reported that Kenya Barris, the creator of ABC’s Emmy-nominated Black-ish, had signed a multi-year deal with Netflix. The deal was for Barris to produce new series exclusively at Netflix. Apparently, that deal could potentially be worth up to as much as $100 million over five years.
Black Excellence marks the first Barris series under this deal.
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The show will look “to pull the curtain back and reboot the ‘family sitcom’ in a way we’ve never seen before,” Deadline reports.
With Black Excellence, Barris will make his acting debut while also executive producing alongside Jones.
Jones, an executive producer on TNT’s hit Claws, recently worked on Angie Tribeca where she acted, directed and produced. As previously reported by Deadline, Angie Tribeca was cancelled yesterday by TBS. She will also be in Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks, starring with Bill Murray.
When Deadline originally reported on Barris joining Netflix, they quoted Cindy Holland, VP, Original Content at Netflix as saying, “Kenya uses his voice to make audiences more aware of the world around them, while simultaneously making them laugh.”
That understanding of Barris’ desire to “make audiences more aware” through his comedy could be exactly why Barris left ABC to move to the less restricted world of Netflix. According to Variety, there was some tension between Barris and ABC after ABC “indefinitely shelved” a Black-ish episode that looked at the controversy around athletes kneeling during the national anthem.
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Barris is another in a line of creators Netflix has lured away from network television, following Shonda Rhimes (creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal) and Ryan Murphy (creator behind Glee and Pose). Rhimes and Murphy also signed multi-year, nine-figure salary deals to exclusively produce content for the streaming giant.
What are you hoping to see from Black Excellence? Let us know your thoughts on what you expect from Kenya Barris’ newest series in the comments!
(Source: Deadline)