Jordin Sparks has been tapped to star in Besties (working title), the upcoming series from Kenya Barris at Freeform. The series will also star newcomer Brooks Brantly and Matt Shively.

The half-hour, multi-cam sitcom, which was first unveiled at network upfronts last year, explores friendship, identity, race and class as two lifelong best friends use each other to get through some of the toughest challenges they will ever face – figuring out who they are and who they want to be.

The series will “follow Becca and her newly discovered half-sister Jesi, as they’re thrown into each other’s lives by an online genetics test and have to figure out how to go from strangers to sisters.”

Sparks’ Becca is described as “an ambitious overachiever from a hard-working, conservative African-American family, who learns that her birth mother is actually white.” Shively will play Matt, “a former athlete and current bar manager, who can’t completely let go of his glory days,” and Brantly is Becca’s brother, Todd, “a mama’s boy who still lives in their parent’s basement.”

Though he has departed for Netflix, this is one of two ABC-based projects from Barris that haven’t made it to our TV screens yet. He’s also developing a Bewitched reboot at ABC.

Ranata Shephard, who created of TV One’s Born Again Virgin, which starred Danielle Nicolet, Eva Marcille and Megan Holder, is the creator of this series, along with Casey Johnson and David Windsor. Barris executive produces.

 

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Freeform Orders New Kenya Barris/Ranada Shepard Comedy, ‘Besties’