Lena Waithe’s long-gestating comedy Twenties is finally coming to TV, and EW has an exclusive first look at the trailer for the BET series.
Through eight episodes, the show will follow Hattie, an aspiring TV writer, and her two friends Marie and Nia, who respectively work as a film executive and a yoga instructor, as they navigate life in their 20s with their careers beginning to take off.
Hattie, played by newcomer Jonica “JoJo” T. Gibbs (Good Trouble), is BET’s first queer female lead, and like executive producer Waithe, she plans on using her gig as a writers’ room production assistant as a gateway to becoming a filmmaker.
Waithe is coming off her feature film writing debut with Queen & Slim, but the semi-autobiographical Twenties was the first piece of her screenwriting that got off the ground, initially as a web series. The show then went from being developed at BET to TBS and then back to BET, and is finally coming to television more than a decade after Waithe first conceived it.
Along with Gibbs, Twenties will star Christina Elmore (The Last Ship) as Marie and Gabrielle Graham (On the Basis of Sex) as Nia, with rapper Big Sean making his TV debut as Nia’s prospective love interest, Tristan. Sophina Brown will recur as Hattie’s boss, Ida B., with Jenifer Lewis, Rick Fox, Vanessa Williams, and Seth Green all guest-starring on the show later in the season. Former A Different World head writer Susan Fales-Hill will serve as co-showrunner.
Twenties will air on BET in early 2020. Watch the exclusive trailer above.
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