‘The Finest Man: Ultimate Chapters’: Malcolm D. Lee on Highlighting Ladies

Malcolm D. Lee wrote the 1999 movie The Finest Man with the need to showcase Black males like him who have been underrepresented on display screen on the time — the “educated, upwardly cellular African Individuals who have been simply ‘regular.’”

Now, 23 years later, Lee is ready to launch all eight episodes of the Peacock restricted sequence The Finest Man: The Ultimate Chapters this Thursday, Dec. 22. Selecting up the place we left off with the 2013 sequel The Finest Man Vacation, the present will catch audiences up with the buddy group as they grapple with midlife crises and rebirths whereas coming into a distinct stage of their lives.

“It’s a continuation of those characters that individuals have been launched to again in 1999, who have been of their postgraduate, mid-twenties determining life and profession, marriage and friendship,” Lee, who serves as a co-showrunner on the sequence, tells TVLine.

“Folks will get what they we’ve come to anticipate from the 2 Finest Man motion pictures, which is problems of life and friendship and relationships and marriage and elevating children now and being within the sandwich years between elevating children and attempting to wrangle your dad and mom. There’s rather a lot happening, and I believe, notably since we’ve had this pandemic, there’s been numerous reassessing and reevaluation.”

Whereas the primary two movies targeted totally on the lads, together with bestselling writer Harper (performed by Taye Diggs) and NFL star Lance (Morris Chestnut), the present will take a more in-depth have a look at a few of its sidelined girls characters, providing a extra balanced story on the subject of the beloved ensemble.

“The truth that we’ve acquired eight hours of tv to do this, it will be felony to not go extra into the feminine characters,” Lee added, noting that greater than half of the Peacock sequence’ writers’ room was comprised of ladies. “I actually needed to verify we had that perspective that I don’t possess. I’m married to a Black girl, however she has her personal factor she’s going to be doing. She will’t be serving to me write scripts.”

For former Insecure author/govt producer Dayna Lynne North, who co-developed, wrote and produced The Ultimate Chapters alongside Lee, it was important to carry the ladies’s voices to the forefront of the present.

“Coming into this period of the franchise and adapting it for tv, it was necessary to me that the ladies not really feel like they have been counterparts or supporting gamers to the lads’s tales,” the co-showrunner shares. “Coming from a sequence like Insecure [and] being a Black girl with an organization referred to as Loud Sis Productions, it was necessary to me to return into this franchise and ensure that the ladies had absolutely realized, three-dimensional layered arcs.”

That meant exploring extra sides of a personality like Shelby (Melissa De Sousa), who’d been beforehand portrayed as a fiery, actuality housewife determine with not a lot depth to her.

“She’s been this enjoyable, clapback-y, love-to-hate-her sort of character within the first two movies,” North explains. “She was humorous, and we will take pleasure in her. It was humorous to see her randomly find yourself with Quentin [in both The Best Man and Best Man Holiday].”

“However it’s like, ‘Who is that this girl past that? Past simply the lady who misplaced Murch?’” she continues. “It was like, ‘What’s the arc? What does it appear to be to get to know this girl and truly care about this character?’ Certain, she’s nonetheless any individual that you just’ve acquired to roll your eyes at, but it surely was enjoyable to create a personality that I now love. That’s what’s been enjoyable: constructing out every of those characters and actually making a lens into their world the identical manner we now have a lens into every of the lads.”