Way back in June 2013, HBO ordered a pilot from Late Night With Jimmy Fallon writers Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin that was to be produced by Lorne Michaels. The plot was to focus on Riddle and Salahuddin as reporters trying to make it in Atlanta, but—as evidenced by the fact that you’ve probably never seen this show—HBO didn’t take it to series. The network did, however, send Riddle and Salahuddin back to try and redevelop the show into something else. They dropped everything but themselves and the city of Atlanta, and they came up with Brothers In Atlanta, a completely new pilot idea about the two of them as entertainers trying to make it in Atlanta.
Now, thanks to Deadline, we also know some other people who will be in the show: former Saturday Night Live-r Maya Rudolph and totally level-headed young person Jaden Smith. Rudolph will play “an R&B diva whose heyday was in the ‘90s,” and Smith will be a “rowdy” teenager “with unpredictable interests and suspicious income.” You know, like a teenager. Deadline says both “are set to recur” if HBO picks up Brothers In Atlanta, which means Jaden will have even more opportunities to avoid being brainwashed by the American school system that he despises so much. The pilot will be filmed in some city in Georgia later this year, so HBO’s decision about picking it up or not is probably still pretty far off.
