GOSSIP - Viola e...giallo!

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GOSSIP - King is queen of..."Shape"! L'attrice di "HTGAWM" Aja Naomi King conquista la cover del magazine dello stare in forma

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NEWS - Shonda La-Land! Ecco cosa porta in dote la Rhimes nello storico approdo a Netflix

Articolo tratto da "Il Foglio"
"Cosa porta in dote Shonda Rhimes a Netflix, traslocando dalla Abc con le sue armi e suoi bagagli? Leggi: lo smisurato talento e la casa di produzione ShondaLand, che ha come logo un cuore circondato da un ottovolante. L'ultima volta che abbiamo sentito un nome proprio attaccato a "land" - dopo Disneyland si intende, e la Abc appartiene proprio al gruppo Disney - era per identificare il territorio dove Graham Greene ambienta i suoi romanzi: consoli ubriaconi, venditori di aspirapolvere arruolati come agenti segreti, personaggi annegati nella colpa come i cetrioli nell'aceto. "Greeneland", appunto. A una donna nera di 35 anni - tanti ne aveva quando fondò la società di produzione - serve un bella dose di sfacciataggine per dichiarare: con le mie parole ho fabbricato un universo che non c'era, e di quell'universo sarò la regina incontrastata. Da ragazzina sognava di essere Toni Morrison, e quando finalmente da grande incontrò il premio Nobel, scopri che la scrittrice di "Amatissima" voleva parlare soltanto di "Grey's Anatomy". Come accadde nell'altro celebre incontro tra un premio Nobel e un lavoratore dello spettacolo: Groucho Marx andò a cena con T. S. Eliot dopo aver ripassato per bene "La terra desolata", e scopri che il poeta sapeva a memoria "anche le battute dei miei film che avevo dimenticato". Shonda Rhimes guadagnava dieci milioni di dollari all'anno: ben spesi, si calcola che abbia fatto guadagnare all'emittente due miliardi di dollari negli ultimi quindici anni. La cifra del nuovo accordo non è ancora resa nota, né da lei né da Ted Sarandos, Chief content officer che sta facendo per Netflix una campagna acquisti senza precedenti. Senza precedenti è anche il passaggio di una showrunner dalla televisione generalista - non una tv via cavo, che punta sugli abbonati e può osare in termini di contenuti - a una piattaforma che distribuisce contenuti in streaming. Alla Abc Shonda Rhimes aveva conquistato lo spazio che in gergo ormai si chiama Tgit. Sta per "Thank God It's Tuesday": al giovedì era programmata "Grey's Anatomy" (da 14 stagioni), seguita da "Scandal", prima serie con una protagonista nera - e verrebbe voglia di aggiungere ricca e di successo - dagli anni Settanta (sei stagioni, la settima a ottobre). Dal 2014 i giovedì a Shondaland si completano con "How To Get Away With Murder", condensato per l'hashtag in #HTGAWM. Un legal thriller, con studenti della facoltà di Legge allenati - non si trova altro termine: li interroga a bruciapelo, li fa gareggiare tra loro sullo stesso caso - da Annalise Keating (l'attrice è Viola Davis). Una brillante avvocatessa nera che si trova implicata in un delitto: nel campus a Philadelphia circola una sua foto con la scritta "killer". Serve per misurare la distanza da Perry Mason, che non poteva essere neppure sospettato. E dal cinema che arranca, a Natale vedremo "Delitto sull'Orient Express" diretto da Kenneth Branagh che dopo essersi dilettato con Shakespeare ripiega su Agata Christie. Se la annunciano come "la più importante showrunner donna e nera", lei fa cancellare "donna" e "nera" (in effetti, non se ne vedono tanti altri all'orizzonte). Le serie già avviate resteranno alla Abc, con Netflix il futuro è da inventare. C'è da immaginare - per esempio - come il binge watching (tutte le puntate di una serie rilasciate in un sol colpo) potrà conciliarsi con il seguito che Shonda Rhimes ha sui social. Vedere una serie ogni giovedì, tutti insieme, fa comunità e produce tweet. Vederlo da soli, nelle dosi che uno preferisce, non produce lo stesso effetto". (Mariarosa Mancuso)

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Stralci, cover e commenti sui telefilm dai media italiani e stranieri

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GOSSIP - Tigre Viola! Look total black da Tina Turner in libera uscita per la Davis di "HTGAWM"

Viola Davis of "How To Get Away With Murder" is slaying the fashion game! The Oscar winning actress was seen walking through LAX Airport in a sheer top, looking amazing on Monday (April 24) in Los Angeles. Viola was joined by her husband Julius Tennon for her flight. If you missed it, Viola was recently named one of Time 100′s most influential people in the world for 2017! Viola graced the cover of the magazine as well.

News: #ABC Renews ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Scandal’ and ‘How To Get Away With Murder’ for New Seasons.https://t.co/9Ykw0gxtYY via @variety

— AccademiaTelefilm (@AcademyTelefilm) 10 febbraio 2017

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Stralci, cover e commenti sui telefilm dai media italiani e stranieri

CORRIERE DELLA SERA
"Rosewood", tendenza afroamericana anche nei crime
"'Rosewood' è la nuova serie poliziesca partita su Fox Crime (il venerdi alle 21.00). Il dottor Beaumont Rosewood (l'attore Morris Chestnut) è uno dei più brillanti patologi di Miami. Quando la polizia si trova di fronte a casi apparentemente irrisolvibili richiede la sua consulenza: grazie alle più sofisticate attrezzature tecnologiche presenti nel suo studio e soprattutto grazie al suo intuito infallibile, i corpi delle vittime di presunti omicidi diventano fondamentali indizi da decifrare. Ogni minimo segno che la vita ha lasciato sul corpo umano diventa per Rosewood una chiave per spiegarne la morte. Il fascino della serie si gioca su sue piani: da un lato, la ricostruzione dei casi di omicidio attraverso il lavoro del patologo. I riferimenti non troppo nascosti sono quelli delle scene del crimine analizzate dagli esperti di «CSI», dello studio delle tracce di sangue fatto da Dexter, persino della logica deduttiva usata dal Dottor House per guarire i pazienti affetti dalle malattie più rare. Dall'altro il personaggio di Rosewood, un uomo dal carattere brillante, ottimista e amante della vita, parecchio egocentrico (è uno che si definisce "il Beethoven dei patologi") ed eccellente nel suo lavoro: il suo stretto rapporto con la morte, che analizza tutti i giorni, è forse dovuto a un complesso problema cardiaco che presenta dall'infanzia e che minaccia di ucciderlo da un momento all'altro. Quando la detective Annalise Villa si trasferisce a Miami e inizia a collaborare con Rosewood, è presto chiaro che il rapporto non sarà solo di tipo professionale. Sia l'interprete principale, sia molti comprimari di «Rosewood» sono afroamericani: è una tendenza vista negli USA anche con altre serie di successo, da «Empire» a quelle firmate da Shonda Rhimes («Scandal», «Le regole del delitto perfetto»), capaci di rappresentare professionisti affermati e di successo non solo provenienti dal mondo WASP". (Aldo Grasso, 20.06.2016)

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Stralci, cover e commenti sui telefilm dai media italiani e stranieri

CORRIERE DELLA SERA
"The Catch", lo Shondaland che non convince  
"Una Shonda un po' di maniera, tra spy story e soap opera. The Catch narra le avventure (e disavventure) di Alice Vaughan (Mireille Enos), l'investigatrice privata più glamour di Los Angeles. La sua agenzia ha i più importanti clienti della città, ma un cedimento sentimentale fa saltare il banco. Quando a pochi giorni dal matrimonio il suo fidanzato Benjamin Jones (Peter Krause) scompare nel nulla senza lasciare traccia, Alice non ha il tempo di piangere la fine di un amore: una colossale truffa rischia di rovinarle vita e carriera (FoxLife, lunedì, ore 22). The Catch è Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Le Regole del delitto perfetto), nel senso che nessuna serie è così marchiata e individuabile come quelle che scrive Shonda. Lei stessa ha teorizzato la costruzione dell'universo Shondaland: «Scrivere per la tv è totalmente diverso dallo scrivere per il cinema. Un film è la visione diretta del suo regista, ma il medium televisivo appartiene agli sceneggiatori: quando uno dei miei show va in onda è esattamente come l'avevo immaginato». Anche qui la storia principale, che ha per protagonista una donna che ricopre un ruolo di responsabilità, non risparmia intrighi e sentimenti, colpi di scena ed emozioni, abiti firmati e passioni travolgenti. C'è però un indizio tecnico poco convincente: l'uso esagerato dello split screen (lo schermo frazionato in diverse inquadrature), quasi a voler tenere insieme più storie che rischiano di sfuggire di mano. Senza rivelare nulla, The Catch si regge su opposizioni. Il famoso Mister X che la Anderson/Vaughan Investigations tenta di smascherare è anche l'uomo di cui Alice è innamorata, peraltro contraccambiata. La caccia al ladro è anche caccia all'amore. La solare ambientazione californiana, un po' plasticosa, stinge ogni contrasto in commedia, o quasi. E non c'è niente di più difficile che costruire un giallo svelando sin dalla prima puntata il garbuglio". (Aldo Grasso, 04.05.2016)

NEWS - How to Get Away with Rumour. Terremoto ABC. Si dimette il Presidente delle "diversità" ("Quantico", "HTGAWM", "Black-ish"...) e arriva la prima dirigente nera di un major network (colei che volle fortemente "Scandal" e "OUAT"). Ma ora ques'ultima vuol rivoluzionare la rete e renderla più procedural...! 

News tratta da "Uproxx"
There’s little that’s flashy about ABC. It lacks an Empire-sized hit. Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder recently returned to series-low ratings. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to be a ratings disappointment compared to the CW’s superior superhero series. But of the Big Four networks, ABC is quietly the most consistent.
Modern Family, while not Outstanding Comedy Series-worthy, isn’t a bad show, and Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, The Middle, and The Goldbergs continue to impress week after week. On the drama side, Quantico is a bonafide hit; Agent Carter has greatly improved in its second season; and your aunt probably still watches Castle. That’s a solid group of shows, but ABC ranks last in the 18-to-49 demographic, which is one of the reasons why the network’s frustrated entertainment president, Paul Lee, resigned today.

Mr. Lee’s departure was orchestrated by Ben Sherwood, chairman of the Disney-ABC Television Group, who became Mr. Lee’s boss early last year. Mr. Sherwood, who disagreed with Mr. Lee over programming choices and future strategy, has used ABC’s soft standing in the overall ratings race to make a case inside Disney for a management shake-up at the network. (via New York Times)

This departure is a big deal for two reasons. One, Lee is being replaced by Channing Dungey, the first black president of a major broadcast network. She helped launch Scandal and Once Upon a Time, two of ABC’s biggest hits.

Two, Lee emphasized diversity (Quantico, How to Get Away with Murder, Fresh Off the Boat, and Black-ish all premiered under his watch), wasn’t quick to pull the trigger on dramas with lower-than-expected ratings (like Agent Carter), and was willing to make on-the-fly adjustments, as he did (for the better) with The Muppets. In addition to being an advocate for those shows, Lee also backed “serialized dramas like Scandal and American Crime,” according to the New York Times, while the hands-on Sherwood “wanted ABC to focus more on CBS-style procedural crime series like N.C.I.S.” That’s worrisome.
It’s historically important that Dungey is the new president of ABC Entertainment, and lucky for her, Lee didn’t leave the cupboards bare. There are a lot of quality shows on ABC already — now it’s up to Dungey to find the one big hit her predecessor couldn’t. Hopefully it’s not N.C.I.S.: Orlando.

GOSSIP - Poca Viola e molte spine. La Davis di "HTGAWM": "A Hollywood gli afro-americani sono ancora limitati"

Viola Davis shows off her stunning smile on the cover of InStyle‘s January 2016 issue, on newsstands December 11. Here is what the 50-year-old How to Get Away with Murder actress had to share with the mag:

On marriage: “I’ve learned that it’s not always about you. Marriage is a dying to yourself, but [also this] renewing and being born into a state of commitment, of understanding the value of partnership in life.”

On African-American women in Hollywood: “Unwritten racial casting rules absolutely still exist. I’ve played many best friends, crack-addicted mothers, next-door neighbors, or professionals with no personal lives. It goes back to perception. There is a limitation to how we are seen.”

On aging: “What’s released me most from the fear of aging is self-awareness. I’ve never determined my value based on my looks or anything physical. I’ve been through a lot in life, and what has gotten me through is strength of character and faith.”

For more from Viola, visit InStyle.com! Bigger cover pic inside…

NEWS  - Game of Emmys! Ecco come l'ultima edizione può aver cambiato/rimescolato le carte in tavola (la vittoria di un fantasy la dice lunga...)

Post di Brian Lowry su "Variety"
New voting system, infusion of new members, same old Emmys? In some respects, yes, but with a very significant – indeed, one might say dragon-sized – asterisk, in the outstanding drama award that went to the hugely popular but heretofore overlooked “Game of Thrones” representing a rare and welcome breakthrough for a genre series. Beyond capping a splendid and dominating night for HBO, the Television Academy finally recognized a fantasy epic that is, by any measure, no pretender to the throne — the series scooped a record-breaking 12 Emmy Awards this year.
Combine that with stellar and crowd-pleasing honors for Jon Hamm and Viola Davis in the lead drama categories, and Jeffrey Tambor on the comedy side, and Emmy organizers should wake up feeling pretty good (or at least relieved) by most of the choices, while leaving behind ample room for the inevitable griping about snubs.
The perception that the academy is old and fusty (just ask “Sons of Anarchy’s” Kurt Sutter, or “The Walking Dead” fans) hasn’t been helped in recent years by its consistent refusal to acknowledge programs in the sci-fi and fantasy realm, even with “Lost” winning a decade ago. And while there’s no way to know if procedural changes in the voting smoothed the way for “Thrones’” victory, the fact that the mega-hit finally made it over the wall – sweetened by its Sunday-night wins for directing, writing and Peter Dinklage – clearly seemed overdue.

For all that, much of the ceremony still felt in keeping with Emmy Awards past – that is, a few new faces thrown in with a plethora of familiar ones, including repeat winners and a few near category-wide sweeps.
The abundance of first-rate programs and performances gave voters a lot of ways to go without embarrassing themselves, although the parade of talent associated with HBO’s splendid miniseries “Olive Kitteridge” couldn’t help but come at the expense of some very worthy players, none more so than Mark Rylance (“Wolf Hall”) and Queen Latifah (“Bessie”).

As for variety series, “The Daily Show’s” sweep of program, directing and writing honors was an appropriate valedictory sendoff for Jon Stewart’s tenure, balanced by a newly introduced sketch award to Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer.” Like a lot of categories Sunday, the real shame was that David Letterman couldn’t share in the glory.
Certainly, the comedy voting exhibited some of the academy’s more hallowed tendencies, returning to repeat winner Tony Hale and perennial favorites Allison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who should have the steps to the Nokia Theater stage memorized. That’s not to say they didn’t deserve more hardware, only that repeat awards can’t help but feel a trifle deflating excitement-wise with so many admirable contenders. (Even switching from comedy to drama couldn’t stop “Orange Is the New Black’s” Uzo Aduba).
If “Modern Family’s” best-comedy run had to come to an end, “Veep” – which had what was likely its best season – felt like a much safer choice to swing the axe than “Transparent,” which would have represented an enormous coup for Amazon’s fledgling original-series efforts. As it was, the streaming service didn’t exactly settle, earning awards for series creator Jill Soloway and Tambor, perhaps the clearest-cut acting selection in a night filled with races that could have reasonably gone in different directions.

After all the buzz about greater diversity at this year’s awards, the academy also delivered on that score, with Davis’ overpowering work in “How to Get Away With Murder” marking a milestone for African-American actresses, joined by Aduba and Regina King, who made the most of a relatively small role in ABC’s “American Crime.”
In terms of the amended rules, the big change involved dispensing with Blue Ribbon panels, which as conducted shrank the voting pool but insured that those who choose, say, best TV movie actually watched all the candidates. Instead, the selections were opened up to the entire membership, making the process more democratic on its face. What nobody can know, of course, is how many of those members cast ballots based on reputation, in much the way people check off Superior Court judges and school board members on election day.
Still, even if the Emmys turned into one big popularity contest, “Thrones” – a landmark drama – can finally enjoy a feast where no one gets killed, and most of the right folks won. While there’s no such thing as an awards show now that’s going to satisfy everyone in our fragmented media landscape, when was the last time the Television Academy – or just about any large group that votes on stuff – could say that?

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Shonda su onda! "EW" dedica ben 4 cover alle "creature" della Rhimes... 
Shonda Rhimes and her leading ladies, Kerry Washington, Ellen Pompeo, and Viola Davis take the cover of EW‘s latest issue!
There are four separate covers highlighting Shonda‘s hit ABC shows Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, and Scandal. Here’s what the cast had to share about their shows:
Ellen, on the sexist response to McDreamy: “All of a sudden, ­Patrick [Dempsey] leaves, and it’s like, Oh my God, ­Meredith’s gonna get killed with Alzheimer’s! The show couldn’t possibly go on ­without the man!”
Viola, on colorism in the entertainment industry: “You have to come from Detroit or Atlanta to be black. If you have John Denver on your iPod and you come from Central Falls, Rhode Island, then: Eh, you trickle-down black woman.”
Kerry, on why it’s different to work for a female showrunner: “I was talking to an actress who’s pregnant and really worried about telling her bosses, and I said, ‘Yeah, when I told my boss I was pregnant, she literally jumped up and down in my trailer.’ I don’t know if there’s a male show­runner who would do that.”
For more from the ladies, visit EW.com!

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Sei attrici in cerca di dramma! "THR" riunisce le mejo attrici drama per una storica cover con annessa tavola rotonda

Six Emmy contenders Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Lizzy Caplan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Lange, and Ruth Wilson take the cover of The Hollywood Reporter‘s latest issue, hitting stands this week. They speak candidly during a roundtable about race, sexism, aging, nudity and typecasting.
Viola on what most appealed to her and scared her about playing the lead in a Shonda Rhimes drama (How To Get Away With Murder): There was absolutely no precedent for it. I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualized role in TV or film. I’m a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the “mommified” role. Then all of a sudden, this part came, and fear would be an understatement. When I saw myself for the first time in the pilot episode, I was mortified. I saw the fake eyelashes and, “Are you kidding me? Who is going to believe this?” And then I thought: “OK, this is your moment to not typecast yourself, to play a woman who is sexualized and do your investigative work to find out who this woman is and put a real woman on TV who’s smack-dab in the midst of this pop fiction.
Maggie on a specific point in her career when she felt the bravest: I had a rape scene in The Honorable Woman where it was clearly written that she’d be saying, “No, no, please, no,” right away. But I wanted her to be complicit and wanting it; the darkest, most painful sex, right up until the point it turned into rape. I wanted her to want something she knew she shouldn’t want. I can sometimes tell when actors fought an ordinary approach to a scene, and I’m so glad they did because it tells a better story.
Lizzy on if it’s tough to do a lot of nudity on Masters of Sex: I was more afraid of doing nudity on [HBO’s] True Blood. It got easier after that, but I’m not ever 100 percent comfortable. There was a scene last season where I take my robe off, I’m naked and then transition into locked-eye [with Michael Sheen’s character], full-on masturbation from beginning to end. We have a female showrunner who considers herself a prude, so the sex scenes always move the story forward. But I remember being in my trailer before that scene and thinking for the first time since the show started: “I really don’t want to go out there and do this.”
Watch the video of the roundtable at HollywoodReporter.com. Pics below!

 

NEWS - ShondAttack! La regina di "Scandal", "Grey's" e "HTGAWM" risponde per le Rhimes all'analisi di "Deadline" sul fatto che oltre il 50% dei personaggi nei pilot siano afro-americani ("pur essendo il 13% della popolazione")
Shonda Rhimes took to her Twitter account on Tuesday night (March 24) to blast an article posted by Deadline as it suggested that the surge of ethnic casting on television was “too much of a good thing.”
The article quickly was put on blast by Hollywood heavyweights after it stated that 50% of the roles in pilots these days have to be ethnic despite African-Americans only representing 13% of the U.S. population.
The article also suggested that “the pendulum might have swung a bit too far in the opposite direction” after years of there being very few roles for non-Caucasian actors.
Shonda, the creator of such smash hit shows as Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder, previously slammed the New York Times after the paper’s critic called her an “angry black woman.”

1st Reaction:: HELL NO. Lemme take off my earrings, somebody hold my purse! 2nd Reaction: Article is so ignorant I can't even be bothered.

— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) 25 Marzo 2015

L'EDICOLA DI LOU - Stralci, cover e commenti sui telefilm dai media italiani e stranieri

FLAVORWIRE
Are This Season’s Diverse Shows Ushering in a New Era of Multicultural Television?
"In the first episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, a new fish-out-of-water sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family that moves from DC to suburban Orlando, patriarch Louis Huang (Randall Park) floats the idea of hiring a white greeter for the steakhouse he owns so white people will feel comfortable when they walk in and spot a familiar face. It’s a clueless, optimistic line that is played for laughs, and Park’s delivery is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also a line that works on multiple levels, because it speaks volumes about the current television landscape and its irritating approach to diversity: Networks cater to white audiences by always promoting white faces — or trying to universalize the nonwhite narratives that they do have in an attempt at mass appeal — rather than taking chances on stories whose characters don’t superficially resemble the majority of their viewers. 
Fresh Off the Boat is the first Asian-American sitcom in 20 years, since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl, which ran for just one season (also on ABC) in 1994. The show is doing great in terms of both ratings (Episode 5, which aired February 17, had more viewers than Parks and Recreation and New Girl combined) and critical response — as are the other diverse freshman programs airing on major networks this season: ABC’s clever sitcoms Black-ish and Cristela, Fox’s infectious musical drama Empire, and The CW’s telenovela-inspired Jane the Virgin, which earned lead actress Gina Rodriguez a Golden Globe award.
With the overwhelming success of these new programs centered on nonwhite characters, it’s easy to wonder: Why didn’t this happen sooner? The answer is as simple to state as it is complicated to explain: Minority narratives have a hard time making it to network television and an even harder time staying there.
What makes this even more frustrating is that once these programs manage to get on the air, they tend to do very well in ratings and among critics but face extra challenges in achieving longevity. The networks’ loyalty to these programs is always in question, because history has shown executives aren’t fully committed to diverse shows for their own sake, instead relying on them for quick monetary gain or a temporary influx of viewers. And this is especially disappointing in light of fans’ love for these shows — just take a quick glance at your Twitter timeline during Shonda Rhimes’ Thursday takeover (Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder are inescapable) or when Empire airs on Wednesday, blowing up the trending topics before the episode even begins. There is even an ongoing joke, largely on Black Twitter, about how Black-ish and Empire are on at the same time, forcing us to choose.
Outside of audience enthusiasm, these shows are flourishing in terms of sheer popularity. Fresh Off the Boat‘s ratings increased 12 percent between Episodes 4 and 5 (and did especially well with teenagers). Empire’s ratings have increased with every episode since its premiere, for eight straight weeks, breaking Nielsen (and DVR) records. Cristela has been praised by critics and performs solidly in the Friday-night death slot (where it’s paired with conservative Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing; the shows will even air a crossover episode this season). Black-ish not only debuted to great ratings but has also managed to hold its own in the coveted post-Modern Family time slot — a feat that is even more impressive when you note the vast number of shows that haven’t survived there: Mixology, How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life), Super Fun Night, and Mr. Sunshine were all canceled within one season; Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23 got axed after the two, finishing its second season on Hulu; and Cougar Town eventually switched to TBS. These shows were, like most network series, largely white.

Some critics, culture writers, and network executives seem baffled by these new, diverse shows’ – and particularly ratings juggernaut Empire’s — success: Who knew that they would perform so well? Who knew that white viewers would occasionally watch and enjoy programs with diverse casts? Who knew that minority audiences seek out minority narratives?
This season it became painfully clear that there is a severe disconnect between — largely white — TV executives and us minority audiences. The fact that there is surprise about Empire or Black-ish’s success is almost offensive; of course these are shows that we wanted and shows that we will watch — we just never had them before. The thirst for representation is so strong that often we will latch on to any program that promotes diversity, even if it’s not that great; Shonda Rhimes’ first show, Grey’s Anatomy, has lost its shine, but fans continue to tune in to the current, 11th season to see black, Latino, and Asian medical professionals portrayed on screen. We just happened to luck out in that the shows being touted this season are actually good.
Naturally, there’s been a lot of praise for the diversity of this season’s TV narratives — even if that praise fails to take into account what a small percentage of programming these shows actually comprise. But this isn’t the first time a “boom” in diversity has occurred on television. Robin R. Means Coleman, an associate professor and the author of African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy, is quick to dismiss the notion that this is a groundbreaking year for minority-focused narratives, explaining that representation on TV is follows a cyclical pattern. “About every 20 years, there is a surge in representations of blacks on television,” Coleman says. “In the ‘70s, there was a particular surge of blacks and black situation comedies: everything from Good Times and The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son — those kind of representations were being offered up.”
“In the ‘80s, you see a bit of an ebb in representations,” she continues. But “then they come back with significant quantity — not always quality — in the ‘90s and that’s what really sparked UPN and WB. You’ve got just dozens of black situation comedies that are being offered up in the ‘90s. The upstart networks are offering up these shows that are really inexpensive and hailing to specific audiences.”
Coleman is referring to all of the television shows of my childhood — I spent so much of the ‘90s glued to UPN that I feel a pang when she first mentions the network. There was In the House (1996-1999), rescued from NBC after the ’95 season, a sitcom starring LL Cool J (LL Cool J!) as a former football player who rents out his house to a divorced mother and her children; Malcolm and Eddie (1996-2000), an Odd Couple-like sitcom starring Malcolm-Jamal Warner from The Cosby Show and Eddie Griffin; Homeboys in Outer Space (1996-1997), which was a black parody of Star Trek; Goode Behavior (1996-1997), a comedy where the main draw was star Sherman Hemsley from The Jeffersons; and, of course, Moesha (1996-2001), which starred R&B singer Brandy and became the network’s biggest success, effectively launching a string of black sitcoms. The show’s impact is chronicled in Susanne Daniels and Cynthia Littleton’s exhaustive 2007 book Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise & Fall of the WB and UPN:

Once Moesha hit in early 1996, UPN went headlong into the urban-ethnic comedy business. The network that bulled itself as “dramatically different” in its first full season, in 1995-96, with no half-hours on its three-night schedule, wound up stacking its 1996-97 season lineup with six urban-skewing comedy series, four on Monday and two on Tuesday. They were in the Moesha vein, meaning that they were built around personalities who rated highly with African American viewers.

Despite Moesha’s popularity with viewers, UPN was met with controversy at the Television Critics Association in 1996, with critics wondering if the network was actively trying to appeal to an urban audience (implying that it shouldn’t) and using terms like “ghettoizing” in reference to its new schedule. What these detractors failed to realize was how important those shows were to minority viewers. (They attracted white audiences as well; Coleman tells me that one of the specific audiences these shows were created to reach was “particularly [white] young men” who are interested in “comedies that had some connection to hip-hop culture — Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, for example.”) In fact, because I mostly watched UPN, WB (The Jamie Foxx Show, The Parent ‘Hood, Smart Guy, and Sister Sister, which had moved over from ABC), and Nickelodeon (My Brother and Me, Kenan & Kel) as a child, I was spoiled in the sense that I wasn’t fully aware that minorities were, well, also a minority on television.
Then, in the late ’90s, the tide of diverse television began to ebb again. Coleman explains that the shortage in minority narratives became “dire to the point that the NAACP, in ’99, launched a boycott against the big four networks [ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox] saying there’s a significantly poor representation [of minorities] both in front of and behind the camera.” By the early ‘00s, I was becoming more and more aware of how little I was seeing myself represented on television.
When the 2014-15 television season began, it was easy to characterize this as some groundbreaking year in which networks were finally coming to their senses about diverse programming. (This, despite the fact that the results of this so-called boom still seem slight when compared to the dozens of diverse shows that existed in the ‘90s, even though there were so many fewer original programs 20 years ago. The Wrap’s recent article, “Black Is the New Black,” oddly cites two shows about white families — The Goldbergs and The McCarthys — as examples of TV’s new diversity, perhaps because the author ran out of ideas.) In reality, these shows more likely represent the beginning of a new cycle to correct the lack of diversity that has plagued networks in recent years: It’s been 19 years since UPN launched Moesha, after all.

The existence of this cycle is what makes it difficult to muster unreserved enthusiasm for TV’s new gestures towards diversity. The abundance of African-American comedies in the ‘90s had less to do with networks actively pursuing representation out of good faith than with networks in a slump desperately seeking shows that were cheap and guaranteed an audience. But, as Coleman explains, “Once [networks] get back on sure grounds, they abandon that kind of programming. That’s exactly what Fox, UPN, and WB did… Once they got their audience, they moved into, and funneled that money into, other programs — 90210, Dawson’s Creek, and those sort of things — and they built their network up for that.”
“There’s interesting analogies in all sorts of labor structures in the history of America about how things are built on the backs of blacks,” Coleman tells me, “and the television industry isn’t very different.” Networks are always concerned with money above all, and will use these minority narratives to get there. They aren’t actively concerned with gaining or maintaining any specific minority audience, as long as they’re able to draw a sizable audience of any variety. What will happen in, say, 2020, when networks have decided that they no longer need Black-ish or Empire? Will those shows even last that long?
 
This year’s new shows do have one advantage over their predecessors: their writers and producers can look to similar series from the last cycle to learn what it takes to succeed — and what to avoid so you don’t fail.
Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl was a notorious disaster and now serves as a master class on how not to make a minority-focused sitcom. Despite promoting it as a sitcom based on Cho’s stand-up, ABC effectively erased all of her comedy — and all of her uniqueness and ethnic specificity, instead creating a series that relied solely on stereotypes (the mother character was a typical “tiger mom” who tried to force her daughter to date successful Koreans), overdone and unoriginal sitcom plots (familial spats, dating woes), and uninspired parodies (of The Real World and Pulp Fiction). Amazingly, despite being a show about a Korean family, the cast only featured one Korean: Cho herself. Plagued with network notes, devastating criticism, and an immense amount of pressure to represent Asian Americans, Cho spiraled into depression, anorexia, and drug addiction, as detailed in her memoir I’m the One That I Want. All-American Girl was supposed to be groundbreaking, but instead proved that minority-centric shows need to be more nuanced and more careful than the average series, and find the proper balance between specific and universal storytelling. Fresh Off the Boat has already succeeded on all of these counts.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired on NBC from 1990 through 1996. Starring Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, the show ran for six successful seasons and still lives on in syndication. The show was a diverse hit (though it must be mentioned that it was created by a white duo: Andy and Susan Borowitz) and appealed to all audiences: black and white, young and old. Fresh Prince did a number of things right: It balanced universal appeal and black-specific plots (as Black-ish is pulling off), it included a range of black characters rather than pigeonholing them (similar to Jane the Virgin, which incorporates a variety of Latino characters who don’t fit stereotypes), and it aired a crossover episode with the white hit Blossom (like Cristela crossed over with Last Man Standing).

But the key was to base the show around a big-name rapper who already had legions of fans: Will Smith. As Coleman observed, young, white audiences are interested in hip-hop culture: Empire is a hip-hop drama with multiple musical interludes (and rumors of an upcoming tour), Black-ish uses hip-hop cues better than any other show on television, and Fresh Off the Boat centers on a young Asian boy (Hudson Yang) who is heavily influenced by hip-hop, identifying with the genre’s outsider point of view and favoring Public Enemy and Notorious B.I.G. T-shirts.
Though All-American Girl and Fresh Prince are virtually opposites (in terms of content, reception, and popularity), they both helped to inform the diverse shows that are currently on air. Fresh Prince showed how successful a program can be with a diverse cast as long as the target audience is clear, while All-American Girl, which was ordered when ABC was freely handing out deals to comedians, shows that it might be harder to keep a program on air than it is to get it there.
But it’s not just a matter of finding an audience. There’s also the substantial pressure put on diverse shows to be practically perfect. Sure, viewers and critics alike heavily scrutinize all new TV programs, but there is an additional burden on these programs in particular. There are so few minority images on television that all eyes are going to be fixed on any new ones that pop up — Asian Americans lined up to watch All-American Girl, but because the portrayal of Koreans was more stereotypical than original or refreshing, many of them changed the channel. Fresh Off the Boat has received a substantially warmer welcome from the Asian-American community.

Eric Haywood, a writer on Fox’s Empire, expands on this, telling me that while this pressure doesn’t determine what happens in the writers’ room, there is still “this underlying awareness that once this show gets on the air, it’s going to have to perform pretty extraordinarily well in order for it to be given the same consideration, as far as staying on the air, as a lot of the mainstream shows.” This is a sentiment I heard echoed by several creators of diverse TV series, who felt burdened with the tasks of both representing an entire group and providing a narrative that is exciting enough to compete with highly rated white programs. It’s an idea that reminds me of the more general sense among people of color that we have to perform extraordinarily just to be considered mediocre.
This theme is articulated elegantly in the Season 3 premiere of Scandal, when Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is being lectured by her father, Rowan (Joe Morton), and he reminds her of an important mantra:
Rowan: Did I not raise you for better? How many times have I told you? You have to be what?
Olivia: Twice as good.
Rowan: Twice as good as them to get half of what they have.
This is the sort of pressure creators who are people of color, and who write programs about people of color, feel. Black-ish has to be twice as good as Modern Family in order to be mentioned in the same conversation; I can’t even do the math to figure out how good Black-ish has to be to win the Emmy over its white peers. It’s why these shows have to work harder, and it’s why viewers, to a certain extent, have our own responsibilities to them. We have to first show that there is a demand for these programs, then continue to demand that more exist, and then, finally, demand that each one is better than the last.

Empire’s Haywood is invested in this process as both a content creator (he’s also written for Private Practice and Soul Food) and a voracious consumer (fans should follow his Twitter account, where he regularly provides smart and funny insights on the TV he’s watching) — meaning that he wants success not only for the shows he works on but for other shows that promote minority representation. “I look at the ratings for Black-ish every single week because I love the show, and I want it to do well,” he says. “I don’t want ABC to have any excuse for not getting behind it 100 percent. I think if I wasn’t writing for Empire right now, I would have the exact same concern [for Empire].”
Eddie Huang, a producer for Fresh Off the Boat who also penned the memoir it was based on and provides the voice-over as an older version of the show’s Eddie, has been vocal about his experiences getting the show from paper to screen, the conflicts he’s had with the higher-ups, and his opinion of the finished product. Before his show premiered, we chatted about the importance of increasing representation on television and why we all need to put in effort to make sure these shows exist and survive. He told me, “At the end of the day, if our communities — communities of color, differences, sexual orientation, even just difference of thought — if we can develop market power, if we can somehow aggregate our voices and opinions, mobilize, and get people to support things monetarily, then we become more important. We are able to then participate or hedge against dominant culture.”

The question then becomes: How do we develop that market power if networks are still overly reliant on the dominant, white culture? Networks still have to sell shows that are specifically developed and catered to minority audiences — or, as Huang puts it, “what’s left over from people who watch The Big Bang Theory” — to a white audience for fear that they won’t last otherwise. It’s why networks tend to interfere heavily to ensure that these shows are still appealing to white viewers. It’s what we witnessed with All-American Girl, when ABC ignored the themes of Cho’s standup and focused more on the “American” generalizations (hey, they’re right there in the title!) than the Korean specifics. It’s why Fresh Off the Boat may sometimes feel unbalanced and why Black-ish repeatedly switches between trope-heavy family sitcom stories and smaller, black-centric shows; in my weekly coverage of the comedy, there is always a discussion of whether the series is playing the race card too often or too rarely. It’s a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation for all of these shows.
When I ask Haywood if he worries about whether white audiences will embrace the shows he works on, he says that although he personally doesn’t, he believes that networks do. “[Networks] simultaneously want a show that feels different, but they don’t want it to be so different that it alienates the white audience,” he says. “And I’m certain that [with] predominately white shows, network executives are not concerned about making sure that their shows incorporate huge numbers of black, Latino, or Asian people. Whether it’s TV, music, or movies, there’s always this undercurrent — or not even an undercurrent; sometimes it’s very expressly slated: We want to make sure this has broad appeal. That’s basically coded language for, ‘We want to make sure that white people will watch.’ If white people don’t watch, for some reason, it is considered not quite as legitimate…. And that can get a little bit frustrating.”
This is a fairly universal struggle among creatives of color, not only in television but also when it comes to diversity in movies, books, and other forms of popular art. It’s an endless internal struggle between telling the story you want to tell and telling the story that you need to tell in order for the result to be deemed “successful” — and, as an added slap, to have that “success” determined solely by white audiences. One solution Eddie Huang suggests is to get those viewers early in the first season and bulk up the ratings so the show will be renewed, and then allow the writers freedom to provide more nuance in the second season. “I hope this show does well,” he says of Fresh Off the Boat, “but I hope that in Season 2, fans hold it even more responsible to the book or to this specific [Asian-American] experience.”
This leads to yet another question: If shows like Fresh Off the Boat are attempting a Trojan Horse approach to storytelling — emphasizing universal, relatable stories in Season 1 before getting specific in Season 2 — how do we ensure that they actually get to that second season? One solution for those who crave diverse television is, obviously, to watch them (Huang suggests putting on Fresh Off the Boat, Cristela, and Black-ish, or at least DVR-ing them and letting them play through, even if you don’t particularly like them). But the unfortunate truth is that no show is guaranteed immunity from cancellation, so maybe a second strategy for beating the dominant culture is to just go all-in in that first season and hope something sticks.

The CW’s Jane the Virgin, for example, a comedy-drama about an accidentally-artificially-inseminated virgin that transcended its silly premise within the first episode, balances its telenovela sensibilities (secret affairs, murder, a big bad) with a surprising and well-written plot about immigration reform. This aspect of the show was hinted at earlier in the season but came to the forefront in the tenth episode, in which Jane’s grandmother Alba (Ivonne Coll) is hospitalized and then threatened with deportation when her undocumented status is found out. Jane the Virgin regularly uses voice-over and on-screen text to add to and comment on its plot, and this episode is no different. Viewers read the words, “Yes, this really happens. Look it up. #ImmigrationReform.”
Not only does this illustrate how some diverse shows are seemingly going for broke by saying what they need to say while they have the opportunity, but it also proves why we need these sort of shows: Where else on TV are we going to find a careful, honest, and accurate depiction of the problems that immigrants face? Jane the Virgin isn’t the only first-year program using this strategy: How to Get Away With Murder, part of Rhimes’ Shondaland family, is tackling the intricacies and complexities of black women’s lives, with highlights ranging from the moment when Annalise (Viola Davis) bared her natural hair to the complicated and fraught relationship between black women and our mothers. Meanwhile, Fresh off the Boat tackled the slur “chink” in its very first episode, Empire is going hard on the topic of homophobia in hip-hop, and Black-ish explores what it means to be black, privileged, and unaware of society’s racism. These are the stories that you can’t find in the average CBS sitcom or NBC drama, whether they feature token nonwhite characters or not.

Though these new shows are currently thriving, their collective future may not be as bright as it seems. Empire, Jane the Virgin, and How to Get Away With Murder have been renewed for a second season, but the others haven’t yet. And while I am optimistic that the other diverse freshman programs will return next year, it’s hard to hold on to that optimism when thinking further into the future. If we are, as both Robin R. Means Coleman and I suspect, just in the midst of another “diversity boom,” then it’s only a matter of time before networks cast these projects aside and go back to the white model that they’re used to.
There’s a more promising way of looking at the situation, too, though: The particular programs that debuted this year don’t necessarily fit the model of previous booms. Black-ish, Cristela, and Fresh Off the Boat aren’t lazy, disposable sitcoms (and only Cristela is multi-camera); they’re comedies that have a deeper, underlying aim to explore minority identities. It’s also notable that some of these newer shows are dramas, because for a long time it seemed blacks could only star in sitcoms — the racial implications of the “clown” character are strong — or, to a lesser extent, as side characters ensemble dramas.
But perhaps it’s the creators themselves who are the most promising part of the current “diversity boom.” They are all adamant about the need for more representation on television and all committed to creating more diverse narratives — even if networks don’t necessarily seek them out (though, admirably, HBO is now actively searching for diverse writers for its new writing fellowship). Take The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl creator Issa Rae’s Color Creative TV initiative, which “aims to increase opportunities for women and minority TV writers to showcase and sell their work, both inside and outside the existing studio system.” It’s a DIY, admirable, and hands-on response that does not exist within the networks’ diversity boom but as a separate entity entirely — as if to say, “If networks won’t give us a chance, we’ll force them to.”
These creators aren’t just idealistic crusaders, though – they’re smart and self-aware, too. They have deep knowledge of how the television business works and know what they can do to combat and, hopefully, stealthily beat the system. Fresh Off the Boat’s Eddie Huang is characteristically candid about his emphasis on the bigger picture of representation on network television, which he sees as more valuable than making a niche, personal show on a cable network: “I can go make the work of art and no one will watch it and it will be canceled within a year,” he says. “And yeah, I intellectually masturbated, but what did I actually change? I’m actually trying to create change.”