SCREENING SOON
The Television Critics Association summer meeting continues in Beverly Hills, with TV networks and streaming services presenting details on their upcoming shows. Lynn Elber and Pablo Arauz Pena offer a roundup of news from the event.
Octavia Spencer is bringing the remarkable saga of black haircare mogul Madam C.J. Walker to television.
Netflix said Spencer will produce and star in a limited series about the outsized life of Sarah Breedlove, who was known professionally as Walker.
The eight-episode drama is based on the book On Her Own Ground by A’lelia Bundles and includes basketball star Lebron James as a producer.
Walker became one of the first U.S. self-made female millionaires by creating and marketing hair products for African-amer- icans at the turn of the 20th century.
Netflix said the series will detail the hostility, rivalries and tumultuous situations that marked Walker’s life.
Spencer is an Oscar-winning actress whose credits include The Shape of Water, Hidden Figures and The Help.
A release date for Madam C.J. Walker was not announced.
A PRINCESS, GROENING STYLE
Matt Groening said his new adult cartoon series Disenchantment has a feminist component that sets it apart from his previous shows.
Groening spoke to reporters about bringing fresh talent to the Netflix show that included the voice actors Abbi Jacobson and Eric Andre.
He also highlighted the differences between the new project and his previous work, the longrunning Fox series The Simpsons.
“One of the reasons that The Simpsons is what it is, is because of the time constraints,” he said. “In this show, we’re able to let it breathe a little more, which I find gratifying.”
The series notably stands out as an adult cartoon with a female lead. It follows the misadventures of an alcoholic slacker princess named Princess Bean, voiced by Broad City star Jacobson, who has everything but a sense of purpose.
Joined by a personal demon named Luci, played by Andre, and a scruffy elf named Elfo (voiced by Nat Faxon), Bean creates mischief in the kingdom of Dreamland, where she’s infamous for her careless antics.
Both Jacobson and Andre have built a following with the hardto-win young adult audience in their shows Broad City and The Eric Andre Show.
The stars shared their stories of growing up watching The Simpsons and finding their place with Groening and Josh Weinstein, creators and producers of Disenchantment.
The new series premières
Aug. 17 on Netflix.
THEIR BRAINS ON DRUGS
Jonah Hill and Emma Stone are starring in a new TV series that tackles sensitive issues of mental illness and the pharmaceutical industry.
The Netflix series, a black comedy titled Maniac, follows two participants in a murky late-stage pharmaceutical drug trial.
Hill plays a man diagnosed with schizophrenia, while Stone plays a woman fixated on broken relationships. Both sign up to test a mysterious pill believed to cure anything about the mind, but things do not go as planned.
Cindy Holland, vice-president of Netflix original series, said it would debut Sept. 21.
Holland called Maniac a “thought-provoking, fever dream of a show.”
The actors starred opposite each other in the 2007 teen comedy Superbad.
MORE MASTER?
Netflix is standing by Master of None and Aziz Ansari despite a sexual-misconduct allegation against him earlier this year.
Cindy Holland, a programming executive for the streaming service, said there’s been thought given to a third season for the comedy starring and co-created by Ansari. She said Netflix would “certainly be happy” to make another Master of None season with Ansari, but didn’t commit to it or indicate what the production or release timeline might be. The show about a young, single actor in New York last aired in 2017.
The allegation that Ansari acted improperly on a date was published in January of this year by website Babe.net, which didn’t identify the accuser. The report sparked debate, with some saying the claim shed light on aggressive sexual behaviour and others dismissing it as a bad date that should have been private.
In a January statement, Ansari acknowledged that he apologized to a woman in 2017 when she told him about her discomfort during a sexual encounter in his apartment that he believed to have been consensual.