CBS has teamed up with the NAACP to make TV history. Together, they’ve developed Beyond The Gates, the first daytime soap with a predominantly Black cast since 1989’s Generations.
The series, set to premiere Feb. 24 on CBS, follows the lives of a wealthy Black family in a posh community.
“The Gates will be everything we love about daytime drama, from a new and fresh perspective,” said Sheila Ducksworth, president of the CBS Studios NAACP venture, in a statement. “This series will salute an audience that has been traditionally underserved, with the potential to be a groundbreaking moment for broadcast television. With multidimensional characters, juicy storylines, and Black culture front and center, The Gates will have impactful representation, one of the key touchstones of the venture.”
At the center of the community are the Duprees, led by genteel patriarch Vernon (played by Clifton Davis), a retired senator, and fierce matriarch Anita (Tamara Tunie), a former singer. Alongside daughters Nicole (Daphnee Duplaix), a high-achieving philanthropist and psychiatrist, and Dani (Karla Mosley), a free-spirited former model-turned-momager, the multi-generational Duprees are considered a powerful and prestigious family and the “very definition of Black royalty,” per the show’s logline — but beneath the opulence reside juicy secrets.
Notable firsts surround the new soap: It’s the first new entry of the genre since Passions premiered in 1999, as well as the first to center on Black characters since Generations, which centered on two Chicago families, the white Whitmores and black Marshalls.
“We wanted to have a show on the air that spoke to a different side of the Black experience,” Val Jean tells Entertainment Weekly over a joint Zoom with Ducksworth. “Not the downtrodden, not the ghettoized. We wanted to show rich, Black people doing messy things.”
“I’ve long been fascinated with showing the side that we haven’t seen a lot of,” says Ducksworth. “In these Maryland suburbs, there were some of the most affluent African American counties in all of America. So looking at that and the wealth of everything at Howard University, I felt that this was an area that was ripe for the picking. You get the upstairs, the downstairs of it all. It’s true to life.”
At the helm of Beyond the Gates is Emmy-winning daytime veteran Michele Val Jean, who has been a writer on The Bold and the Beautiful since 2012. Val Jean will be its showrunner, writer, and executive producer.
Val Jean’s involvement is something of a full-circle moment because, in addition to The Bold and the Beautiful, she penned episodes of General Hospital and Santa Barbara, and was a writer for Generations.
That trailblazing series, premiered to much fanfare in 1989. But after weeks of ranking last in network ratings, NBC pulled the plug on it just 13 months after its premiere.
The show “was so far ahead of its time. However, it wasn’t designed that way. It was designed to feature African American family life, white family life, and mixed family life, organically.”
She added that the cancellation came during “pre-internet days,” despite a massive fan campaign to save Generations. “Had the internet existed then, you and I both know that show would never have been canceled,” she said.
She’s thinking Beyond The Gates will have a better and longer-lasting impact.