Tarell Alvin McCraney is a busy man.
The writer has teamed up with Oprah Winfrey and Michael B. Jordan to create a daring drama about a young black man fighting for his education, according to Deadline.
David Makes Man is an upcoming drama to air on Winfry’s OWN tv channel. The series will be executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and Michael B. Jordan. It will also star Phylicia Rashad and Akili McDowell.
The story follows David, a young man struggling with the death of his childhood friend and his financial situation. He’ll then be pulled by the home and neighborhood that he once knew and the call to higher education.
“I think every piece that I’ve ever made is always somehow rooted in my own truth,” said Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney.
“In examining a certain part of my life, when I lived in that place called Homestead—which is like 50 miles south of Miami—I wanted to talk about a moment when I had to make decisions of what my life would be. That’s weird, for a 12-year-old to be thinking that they had to make these life-altering decisions right then, and it just dawned on me that that wasn’t just happening to me; that it was happening to many people,” McCraney told Deadline’s Sundance Studio with McDowell.
He then added, “I had friends and colleagues in life who would say, ‘Yeah, I had to decide what high school I wanted to go to, or what profession I wanted to be.’ And then I had other friends in other places who had more access who said, ‘Oh, nah. I didn’t really figure it out until I was 23.’ So, it was really important to me to look at how, in the black community—especially the black community in poverty—we had to really figure things out early, or not.”
In the past few years, McCraney has been making moves in television, in film, and on the stage. The writer's semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue got adapted into the film Moonlight. That movie then became the 2017 Academy Award winner for Best Film.
Afterwards, McCraney became the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama, one of the most prestigious theatre programs in the country.
Despite taking a teaching job, McCraney continued to write and is now working on a play about the first drag queen to run for U.S. president. In addition, his play Choir Boy premiered on Broadway last month and is receiving good reviews. And now, he is working on this show for OWN.
McCraney is quickly becoming one of the hardest working and widespread writers in entertainment. And we can’t wait to see what he’ll do next.
