I co-hosted the Black Girl Nerds Podcast with the youngest stars of the television sitcom Black-ish. It was a great conversation, click through for a link to listen!
Tag: Anthony Anderson
ConStar's Pilot Watch: Black-ish
Is Black-ish the new Cosby Show? I'm not so sure, but there's certainly potential. Also, Tracee Ellis Ross kills it.
Upfronts 2014: Black-ish
The show makes me both excited and nervous. I'm excited to see a black family on television. I'm even more excited to see a black family in a network single camera sitcom. But oh boy am I nervous. The title alone is a little worrisome--black-ish implies that through their middle class lifestyle, they're not fully black, only a little black or sort of black. Hopefully the show addresses this with comedy and class.
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TV #Diversity Pilots 2014 Trend: More Black Actors
TV Pilots 2014 Trend: More Black Actors.
With Scandal ruling primetime and star Kerry Washington becoming an awards season fixture, more pilots led by black actors are in the works this season.
These are some of the black actors getting roles in upcoming pilots: Viola Davis, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, Craig Robinson, Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson, Jada Pinkett Smith, Octavia Spencer, & Halle Berry. This is a star studded list of people and doesn’t even include the actors from FOX’s upcoming Hieroglyph, who are less mainstream A-/B-list actors. It’s wonderful getting to see more faces of color on television, hopefully with stories that diversify the stereotypes often relegated to such characters.
Now we just have to hope these shows get picked up past their pilots, so we actually get to see them act in these shows.
Pilot Season Diversity Watch: Anthony Anderson to Star in ABC Comedy Pilot 'Black-ish'
It’s early pilot season, so it’s a good time to start looking at the shows coming to our screens in the fall. Let’s look at the shows with diverse casting or production staffs that have been greenlit by the network. This doesn’t mean they’ll air in Fall–that depends on various things and most decisions are put forth in May–but they’ve been approved to be shot.
One pilot to look for is Black-ish, starring Anthony Anderson. Here’s the TVLine description:
Black-ish (Comedy) [ABC]
EPs | Kenya Barris, Anthony Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Sugland, Tom Russo, Peter Principato, Paul Young, Brian Dobbins
CAST | Anthony Anderson (Guys With Kids)
An upper-middle class black man struggles to raise his children with a sense of cultural identity despite constant contradictions and obstacles coming from his liberal wife, old-school father and his own assimilated, color-blind kids
Sounds interesting. I hope it doesn’t go the way of Guys with Kids, which failed to really spark anything in me and I gave up after like 2 episodes. I think this wants to hearken back to the Cosby Show, which I loved, but updated for a modern era. The Cosby Show was more insulated in terms of who the kids hung out with than this sounds like it will be.
I wonder why there are so many executive producers, usually we get one or two main names, rather than the list of 8 like above. And is the last time ABC had a majority/all black comedy cast My Wife and Kids (another show it relates to in terms of being a black family comedy, but again, that show was very isolated in terms of who the family interacted with on camera)?
I’m not sure how I feel about the title, or some of the implications. I can only hope that while maintaining “cultural identity,” the show also focuses on and allows the kids and the family to like “non-traditional” things and it being ok or at least a plot point. I could see Anderson’s character trying to get his kids to like classic hip-hop but they like rock instead (just a random example). Which, it’s great and necessary for black children to know their culture and where they came from, but also realize that black people are not a monolith and can enjoy a variety of pursuits not traditionally seen as a part of black culture. A fine line to walk, but one that might be necessary going forward.
I hope we hear more about this.
for more, check TVLine’s Pilot Scoop
Anthony Anderson to Star in ABC Comedy Pilot ‘Black-ish’.
