Writer Fatimah Asghar and director Sam Bailey’s web series Brown Girls just premiered in February, but it’s already gotten so much buzz that the two of them have signed a deal with HBO to adapt Brown Girls for TV. That comes from Elle, which also put together an interview with Asghar and Bailey that touched on how their show about queer women of color living in Chicago took off and what they’re expecting from the new HBO project.
In the interview, Asghar and Bailey highlight the fact that Brown Girls is all about representation. Everyone in the cast is a person of color, making it a story that people “hadn’t seen before” that is still “relatable.” Starring Nabila Hossain as a Pakistani-American writer and Sonia Denis her musician best friend, it effortlessly highlights communities that you don’t often see on traditional TV.
Speaking of, Asghar and Bailey also make it clear in the Elle interview that their goal is for the HBO show to live up to the “resourcefully fly” spirit of the Brown Girls web series, with Asghar noting that she wants the show to be “gritty” instead of “flashy and smooth,” even though they’ll be getting more money to make it. Bailey also adds that HBO has been supportive of their desire to embrace the same kind of music as the web series, which exclusively featured artists who were women of color (most of whom were from Chicago as well).
The HBO show is obviously still in very early stages of development, but you can catch the Brown Girls web series at this link.