BET+ has announced the cast of its upcoming New Orleans-set spinoff of Carl Weber’s The Family Business.
The series will star Lela Rochon, Ben Stephens, Pooch Hall, Yvette Nicole Brown, Orlando Jones, David Banner, Quincy Brown, Nicole Galicia, Erica Hubbard, Sarah Carter, Stan Shaw, Bern Nadette Stanis, Nayirah Teshali, Sacaiah Shaw, Jenson Atwood, AzMarie Livingston and Deric Augustine, Kayla Nicole and Nicholas Turturro. They all join the previously announced Brandon T. Jackson. Rochon and Jackson will serve as associate producers.
The series is based on Weber’s crime drama book series and follows the Duncans, led by patriarch L.C. Duncan (Ernie Hudson). During the day, the family appears to be tight-knit and beloved by their community as upstanding exotic car dealership owners in New York. However, during the night, the family takes part in more criminal activities.
The New Orleans spinoff follows Rochon as Big Shirley Duncan, the owner of Midnight Blues, as she and her family flirt with the criminal underworld on their own, including joining their New York counterparts in the family business. According to the synopsis:
Situated between Old Town New Orleans and the prestigious suburban Parrish of Gator Lake sits a very unique underground casino and club called Midnight Blues, a flourishing staple in the New Orleans area for more than a hundred years. “The Blues,” as locals call it, is a favorite for fun-loving jazz enthusiasts, tourists and celebs who want a taste of the real New Orleans, and homebred locals who just want to kick back and gamble amongst their own.
Midnight Blues may be fun for its regulars, but the club hasn’t been enjoyable for its owners Big Shirley Duncan (Rochon), her younger brother Floyd (Hall) and her son Marquis (Jackson). They are descendants and heirs of the original plantation owner and his slave mistress, and The Blues has been in their family for generations. Now they find themselves in the middle of a turf war with an up-and-coming underworld boss, Jean LeBlanc, (Banner)whose brother winds up mysteriously dead in The Blues. Afraid for the first time in her life that her family is in real trouble and may lose The Blues, Big Shirley sends her son Marquis to Houston, Texas for his own safety.
Marquis, eager to prove his worth not only to his mother but to himself, decides to scrap Houston and board a plane to New York to enlist the help of his family—the original NY Duncans, who run an international crime syndicate. Deep in the middle of their own crisis, Vegas Duncan (Michael J White) sends his cousins, Bounty Hunter Curtis Duncan (Stephens) and his deadly assassin sister Lauren (Teshali), with some muscle down to Nola to handle more family business, Duncan style.
Nikaya D. Brown Jones is the showrunner and executive produces alongside Weber, who also wrote all of the episodes. Trey Haley serves directs the series and also executive produces.
