Someone find Lee Daniels, Kenya Barris, Shonda Rhimes and Jennie Snyder Urman and hug them: their television successes with Empire, Black-ish, How to Get Away with Murder and Jane the Virgin are opening doors for other diverse shows. Give thanks!
January is pilot season, when networks like NBC, Fox, CBS and ABC lock in their new shows and writers are pitching (and probably doing a lot of bumps to stay "on" in meetings without dissolving into tears and pleas of "OMG, please greenlight my project!"). With the high viewership around the aforementioned shows, all which debuted within the last several months and have maintained their audiences, there's a new hot ticket into Hollywood—people of color! ABC can't have all of them! Share!
Now, according to Deadline, all of the networks are looking for shows with minorities. Hell, NBC even requested that one writer named Diana Son change the lead couple in her modern marriage drama, Love Is a Four Letter Word, from a white to a black couple.
Whet.
NBC also picked up The Curse Of The Fuentes Women, "about three generations of Latino women," an Eva Longoria-led Telenovela set behind the cameras of a Spanish-language soap; a modern adaptation of The Wiz (sorry but no one needs or wants this); and a miniseries that sounds like Roots: the Underground Railroad Version.
Pilot season isn't over, so it remains to be seen just how many diverse television shows are purchased. But thanks to Terrence Howard's perm and Gina Rodriguez's Golden Globe win, we outchea.
P.S.: I'm still reserving my judgement of ABC's mid-season sitcom based on Eddie Huang's book Fresh Off The Boat but who am I kidding? I'll support regardless because there will be people of color on TV.
Image via Fox and fabulousness.