Krystal Marquis’ popular Black historical romantic fiction series, The Davenports, is getting the YA television treatment at Prime Video.

Deadline reports that The Gilded Age co-showrunner Sonja Warfield and And Just Like That… executive producer Susan Fales-Hill are set to write and produce the YA series adaptation of The Davenports. The series is currently in development at Prime Video and is a co-production of Amazon MGM Studios, Alloy Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television with Alloy’s president and chief creative officer Leslie Morgenstein executive producing.

What is ‘The Davenports’ book series about

The series is set in 1910 America in the affluent world of Black high society. The Davenports are a Black family that have made it thanks to the family’s car business. According to the logline, “Surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, [patriarch William Davenport’s] daughters Olivia and Helen and their friends are finding their way and finding love–even when they’re not supposed to.

Marquis said in a recent interview with Just Add Color that her idea for the Davenports came after learning about the real lives of the Patterson family, who were the first Black family to own a car business, and prior to building cars, the family built and sold carriages.

Here’s what Krystal Marquis said about her books

“For me, when I was writing it, I just thought about books that I had read when I was about the same age as the characters in the book. And there wasn’t a lot of representation. There weren’t a lot of books that had young black girls on the cover,” she said. “To have this window of, like, wealth and achievement by Black people, which is inspired by real people, was, I think, very inspiring. I wanted it to be something that readers can look at and then go and do their own research and realize like these people [the Pattersons] were [real], this is not fantasy. This is not made up. These people existed. They had all these achievements and there was a whole community of successful people who were reached out and pulled the next person up and helped support it and grow the businesses. They created their own Wall Streets and had self-sustaining communities that really thrived.”

The Davenports

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