Adrienne Warren is reuniting with her “Women of the Movement” creator and showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar. She’s been tapped as a lead in Cerar’s next project, “Black Cake,” a Hulu drama that scored a straight-to-series order last fall. Deadline broke the news.
Described as “a family drama wrapped in a murder mystery with a diverse cast of characters and a global setting that spans decades,” “Black Cake” takes place in Jamaica, Rome, Scotland, England, and Southern California. “In the late 1960s, a runaway bride named Covey disappears into the surf off the coast of Jamaica and is feared drowned or a fugitive on the run for her husband’s murder,” the source details. “Fifty years later in California, a widow named Eleanor Bennett loses her battle with cancer, leaving her two estranged children, Byron and Benny (Warren), a flash drive that holds previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America. These stories, narrated by Eleanor, shock her children and challenge everything they thought they knew about their family’s origin.”
Warren’s character is “an artist and empath who loves with her whole heart, but mysterious circumstances have kept her estranged from her entire family for eight years. When Benny is summoned home by her brother to listen to a message left by their late mother, she is forced to face the ghosts from her past that have kept her from her family for all these years.”
“Women of the Movement” saw Warren playing Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till was brutally murdered by two white men in the Jim Crow South, sending his mother on a journey to seek justice on his behalf. Her other credits include episodes of “Quantico” and “Orange Is the New Black,” and she’ll star alongside Viola Davis in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King,” a historical epic inspired by true events.
“I try to live a purpose-driven life, and if that means helping share the stories of our ancestors and bringing light to stories that have been in darkness, I am happy to be a vessel for that,” Warren told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year.
