Selma director Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey are set to join forces on a new drama series that is based on Natalie Baszile’s novel Sugar Queen and will air on Oprah’s OWN network.
After revealing that her next project was going to be a television show when she spoke to the Guardian in late 2014, DuVernay revealed Monday that she will executive produce, direct and write the show that tells the story of an LA-based woman who leaves the west coast to run a sugar cane farm in Louisiana after her father’s death.
Winfrey, who played the part of civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper in DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated film for best picture, Selma, will executive produce the show as well. Both women talked about being captivated by Baszile’s novel and the desire to bring it to the small screen.
“The story’s themes of reinventing your life, parenting alone, family connections and conflicts, and building new relationships are what I believe will connect our viewers to this show,” Winfrey said.
While DuVernay said: “I was captivated by the idea of a modern woman wrestling with identity, family, culture and the echoes of history.”
When DuVernay spoke about the project in December she spoke about a show that would be an eight to ten episode series similar to Cary Fukanaga’s True Detective and Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick.
Winfrey was criticised recently after she said the protesters in Ferguson and around the country after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, lacked real leadership. DuVernay meanwhile made history by becoming the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe.
