“How to Get Away with Murder” scribe Abby Ajayi is teaming up with ITV for your next TV obsession. The UK channel has commissioned Greenacre Films to produce Ajayi’s “Riches,” a six-part story about a wealthy Black family thrown into disarray when its patriarch suffers a stroke. Deadline broke the news.
Ajayi is writing the series, whose themes are reminiscent of “Empire” and “Succession.” “Self-made Stephen Richards has built a cosmetics empire and become a powerful advocate for Black-owned business, but when he suffers a stroke, his family’s secrets and lies rise to the surface and the future of his multi-million-pound company is at stake,” the source teases. “Stephen abandoned his first wife and two older children, settling down with a younger woman and having another three children. His stroke forces his two worlds to collide, with his two older children learning of their father’s illness from their home in New York, where they have become successful business people in their own right.”
Ajayi said it has been a “joy” to pen “Riches,” and described the central family as “brash, complicated, and indefatigable.”
“Riches” will shoot in New York and London early next year. Greenacre founders Nadine Marsh-Edwards and Amanda Jenks are executive producing. Banijay Rights will handle international distribution.
“It’s aspirational, entertaining storytelling about power and success, but it’s also a brilliant family drama,” ITV drama head Polly Hill observed. “I think it will be a compelling and addictive show to watch.”
Ajayi worked on “How to Get Away with Murder’s” third and fourth seasons, serving as writer and story editor. Mindy Kaling’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral” TV reboot and “Hetty Feather” are among her other credits.
“On ‘How to Get Away With Murder,’ there were seven women in the [writers] room and six were women of color,” Ajayi recalled at a Hollywood Reporter photo shoot featuring 62 Black women writers. Stressing the importance of inclusion in writers rooms, she said, “It didn’t fall on one person to be the voice of all women or all black people. Having multiple women from diverse ethnic backgrounds broadened the conversation, which in turn led to richer, deeper characters.”
