Jordan Ogihara September 23rd, 2020 - 12:29 PM
Development has already begun on The Kings of Napa, a new family drama created by Janine Sherman Barrois (Claws, Self Made: Inspired By the Life of Madam C.J. Walker), as reported by Deadline. The series falls under Barrois’s overall deal with Warner Bros. Television, finalized back in 2018, and based on a contemporaneous report by Women and Hollywood. The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) will handle distribution duties, according to Deadline.
The Kings of Napa will reportedly follow the trials of the King family, a clan of affluent Black wine entrepreneurs on the West Coast who become entangled in a power struggle when their grand patriarch abdicates his executive position, according to Deadline. OWN already has a reputation for supplying the contemporary television landscape with serialized shows about jet-setting Black families, such as Greenleaf and Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar. The latter, similar to The Kings of Napa, tells the story of three siblings vying for power and possession of their father’s financial holdings.
In a recent Instagram post, Barrois named some of her writerly collaborators on The Kings of Napa.
According to Deadline, Barrois is reportedly sharing executive producer duties with Michelle Listenbee Brown. Back in the 2000’s, Brown was a writer on the UPN family sitcoms The Parkers and One on One. The rest of Barrois’s development team appears to feature a combination of highly experienced television writers and fresh, young voices. Rubbing shoulders with Lisa Michelle Payton (Living Single, House of Payne) and Claws scriptwriters Darrin Dortch and Liz Cole are upstarts such as Christian Jordan Grier, a showrunner’s assistant from Season 3 of Claws, Claws writer’s assistant Yael Galena, and Warner Bros. Television Writers’ Workshop alumni Evelyn Yves and Kayla Westergard-Dobson. Yves has already penned an episode of The CW’s musical drama Katy Keene and Westergard-Dobson co-hosts the podcast Pretty Gross Gals.
OWN president Tina Perry described Kings of Napa creator Janine Sherman Barrois as “a seasoned storyteller with her finger on the pulse of exciting stories that hook viewers from the start,” Deadline reports.
