The Urban Movie Channel has announced it’s first original series pick-up for the summer, and it’s from daytime television veteran, Victoria Rowell.
Rowell is the creator of The Rich and the Ruthless, which will also star Richard Brooks, Dawnn Lewis, Robert Ri’chard, Chrystale Wilson, Caryn Ward Ross and many more.
In what Rowell has called her “passion project,” the show which will use a “soap-within-a-soap” format and chronicle the real-life drama of the actors and crew of the first black-run daytime drama in the soap opera industry.
The show’s description reads, “When greedy studio executives inform self-made business man and showrunner Augustus Barringer (Richard Brooks) that “The Rich and the Ruthless” is getting booted off the sound stages for another talk show after twenty years, Augustus is ready to fight back by any means necessary to stay on the air – even if that means filming out of his sleek Hollywood mansion or moving the company to Jamaica! Meanwhile his unpredictable wife, Kitty Barringer (Victoria Rowell), is not happy about any of it. After recently returning home from her latest stint in rehab, she decides it’s time to claw her way back up the cliff and make her soap diva comeback to her role on the show as Blue Sylla, much to her husband’s chagrin.”
Rowell notoriously played fan-favorite, diva Drucilla “Dru” Winters on The Young and the Restless, who is arguably one of the most prominent and notable black characters in the history of daytime. After criticizing the soap for not having enough black talent on-camera and behind the scenes, she left in 2007.
The six-episode scripted comedy will premiere on July 28.
You can peep the trailer below: