Like “Broad City,” “High Maintenance,” and “Insecure” before it, the web series “Brown Girls” is making its way to TV. According to ELLE, “Brown Girls” director Samantha Bailey and writer Fatimah Asghar “have secured a development deal with HBO to bring an untitled series based on ‘Brown Girls’ to television screens.”
Starring Sonia Denis and Nabila Hossain, “Brown Girls” is about the friendship between two young women of color living in Chicago. The series boasts a crew that is 95 percent women and people of color and music that is almost exclusively from local women of color, and has been described as a “cure for white feminism.” Before Bailey and Asghar’s series even premiered on ELLE’s website it drew the notice of people like Willow Smith and media companies like Vice and NBC. When “Brown Girls” finally did premiere in February it “became the second most popular trending topic on Twitter,” ELLE writes.
While Bailey and Asghar’s deal with HBO is still in the very early stages, 3Arts and MXN Entertainment have signed on to produce the series when it makes its transition to television. Plus, the creators did share some of their ideas for the TV project in an interview with ELLE. “The web series is a small, small slice into the potential of the show. I want [the TV show] to be very Chicago-focused and queer folks of color-focused,” Asghar explained. “And to have women of color and queer people of color be the protagonists and the antagonists in their own story. That’s very important to me. I want to grow the show and make it more complicated and more nuanced.”
Bailey added that the shift to HBO could help the show draw a wider audience. “The web series world felt like a safe space where I could experiment and explore all the complexities of being a human,” she said. “Black and brown people and queer folks don’t get that opportunity or rarely get that opportunity in TV. It’s been a really great space for me. But I do think that TV allows you to reach a larger audience. Representation is real and I think the more these shows get greenlit, the more creators get to show these different aspects of people.”
No word on when you can expect “Brown Girls” to hit HBO, but you can check out the web series’ first episode below. The rest of the show is available on the “Brown Girls” website.
