Witherspoon’s production company has added yet another TV series to its busy slate, and this time it will tackle undocumented immigration and American identity.
ABC has put in development Americanized, a half-hour comedy inspired by Sara Saedi’s memoir Americanized: Rebel Without A Green Card, from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and ABC Studios, where Hello Sunshine has a broadcast overall deal.
Written by Saedi (iZombie), Americanized tells the story of a loving and off-beat Iranian family who’s been living with a huge secret: they’re undocumented immigrants. Told through an irreverent, heartfelt and a-political lens, the series will give viewers a window into the life of a Middle-Eastern household while exploring the universal truths that bond every type of “American” family.
Saedi used to work as a creative executive for ABC Daytime and won a Daytime Emmy for her TV short What If. She is further known in Hollywood for penning TV episodes, working at The Goodwin Games and iZombie. Saedi has since switched over to writing fiction novels, publishing two books in her “Never Ever” series, which is a YA fantasy adventure that functions as a teen-oriented Peter Pan retelling.
The show will be a distinct dive into the cultural mores of a Middle Eastern household while it attempts to “[explore] the universal truths that bond every type of ‘American’ family.” Saedi herself will script and executive produce the series.
The deal comes nine years after ABC took a stab at an Iranian family comedy with Funny In Farsi, based on Firoozeh Dumas’s “Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America.” The project went to a pilot directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, marking the first pilot order for producer Aaron Kaplan, but did not make the cut to series.
In the past few years, ABC has been looking to expand its family comedy brand to better represent different sections of American society. The network successfully launched an African-American family comedy with Black-ish, an Asian American family comedy with Fresh Off the Boat and also tried to find another hit Latinx family comedy with Cristela. In addition to Americanized, ABC also is developing multi-generational Latinx family comedy Food and Familia from Peter Murrieta and Overbrook Entertainment starring Danny Trejo whose life inspired it.
Witherspoon, ever the producer extraordinaire, continues to make her mark on the entertainment industry by championing vital stories from people from all walks of life. ABC’s take on “Americanized” actually fits in perfectly with a previous acquisition made by Hello Sunshine that’s actually a feature-length documentary. Alongside the film based on the life of tennis legend Martina Navratilova, which seeks to blend biographical elements and a coming-of-age narrative, Saedi’s story may just be one of Witherspoon’s most important coups yet.
Considering ABC’s prior comedy successes such as Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat, it’s easy to see how Saedi’s story could be in reliable hands. Both Black-ishand Fresh Off the Boat engage in separate cultural issues in vibrant and off-beat ways. There’s a celebration of African-American and Chinese-American visibility within the context of these deceptively fluffier stories, all of which happen to add lighthearted but conspicuously grounded narratives to the onscreen canon that people of color are a part of.
(Excerpt) Read More at: FilmSchoolRejects.com and Deadline.com