A new series celebrating Black women is set to hit Starz.

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Run the World will debut on the network on May 16 following four girlfriends navigating their love lives, career, and friendships in Harlem, New York, per Shadow and Act.

The show is described as:

‘Run the World’ is the story of a group of Black women – vibrant, fiercely loyal best friends – who work, live and play in Harlem as they strive for world domination. At its core, it’s an unapologetically female show about enviable friendship and not only surviving – but thriving together.”

The Lionsgate television production will kick off with eight half-hour episodes. It was created by Leigh Davenport, who had a hand in The Wendy Williams movie, per her IMDb. Living Single creator Yvette Lee Bowser is the executive producer of the series.

Back in February, Bowser told TVline what makes the new series so empowering.

“It’s always timely to tell stories of diverse, ambitious, brilliant women. Additionally, there is a very dynamic, mostly female team behind the series,” Bowser said.

“I brought Lionsgate a script by an unestablished writer whom I thought had an interesting voice, and the studio trusted me to develop the script into a viable series,” she continued.

“That’s the kind of partnership and support creators and showrunners need and can’t thrive without. In that same window of time, Starz was considering buying a similarly themed project, but they valued my stewardship of this particular take and gave the show the nod. That’s trust.”

The series stars Andrea Bordeaux as Ella, Bresha Webb as Renee, Corbin Reed as Sondi, and Amber Stevens West as Whitney.

As reported by theGrio, Tyler Perry also has a new series on the way.

Perry is developing a prequel exploring the life of his signature character, Madea, that takes place during her raucous 20s. 

The potential series, titled Mabel, is being co-created by Perry and Tim Palen. Twin TV writers JaNeika and JaSheika James will handle its writing and executive produce, according to The Wrap. 

Showtime has reportedly ordered “multiple scripts” of the hour-long drama.

“Long before she was the force of nature known as Madea, she was a smart, fierce, irresistible, dangerous, crazy 20-something black woman named Mabel Simmons. When she moved to Atlanta in 1972, she set the city — and the world — on fire,” reads the official description of the series. 

Madea, the character played by Perry who’s a legend in her own right, has appeared in nine of Perry’s films and was a fixture on his stage plays before he broke into Hollywood. She first appeared on screen in Perry’s 2005 Diary of a Mad Black Woman before going on to several eponymous films, the most recent being A Madea Family Funeral in 2019.

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 “Madea is a cross between my mother and my aunt and watching Eddie Murphy, the brilliant Eddie Murphy, do The Klumps. I thought — maybe I should try my hand at a female character. And that’s what came up. I thought I’d imitate the funniest person that I know, and she is exactly the PG version of my mother and my aunt, and I loved having an opportunity to pay homage to them,” Perry told NPR in 2012. 

Additional reporting by Biba Adams

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The post Starz drops new trailer, premiere date for ‘Run The World’ appeared first on TheGrio.