HBO isn’t playing around with its upcoming adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s best-selling letter to his son, Between the World and Me. They’ve just cast Black Hollywood’s elite to portray what it’s like to live in a Black body.
The cast includes SAG Foundation president Courtney B. Vance, Golden Globe Award winner Angela Bassett, Emmy Award winner Oprah Winfrey along with Phylicia Rashad, Pauletta Washington, Susan Kelechi Watson, Joe Morton, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, according to Variety.
The special, which was originally adapted by New York City’s Apollo Theater in 2018, will include some elements from that production along with readings from Coates’s book. Animation, archival footage and even documentary footage from the actors’ lives will also be peppered in. Apollo Theater executive producer Kamilah Forbes will again direct.
Between the World and Me was written as if Coates was writing a letter to his teen son. It spoke about the author’s life, growing up in Baltimore, fearing for his life and how White supremacy permeates everyday life.
It premieres this fall.