Emmy winner Glynn Turman joins Women of the Movement, ABC’s limited series on Mamie Till-Mobley. He is the latest to join the cast that includes Adrienne Warren as Mamie Till-Mobley and Cedric Joe as Emmett Till. Niecy Nash is also attached and she will play Alma, Emmett Till’s grandmother.
The limited series will center on Mamie Till-Mobley and her fight to get justice for son Emmett Till. Till was a 14-year old who was lynched in the Jim Crow South in 1955. Following the brutal murder of her son in the Jim Crow South, Mamie (Warren), a soft-spoken young mother in Chicago, put her own life on the line to seek justice in his name. Unwilling to let Emmett’s murder disappear from the headlines, Mamie chose to bear her pain on the world’s stage. Her doing that ignited the civil rights movement as we know it today.
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Glynn Turman joins Women of the Movement as Mose Wright, Emmett Till’s great uncle. He was a sharecropper, minister, and proud family man. Moses’ testimony during Emmett’s murder trial was among the bravest moments of the Civil Rights Movement. It was one of the first times, if not the first, a Black man stood in open court in the South and accused a white man of a crime.
Women of the Movement is based on the book “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement” by Devery S. Anderson.
Marissa Jo Cerar will write the series and serve as showrunner. Jay-Z, Will Smith and Aaron Kaplan are producing the series. Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct the first episode.
The six-episode series will premiere in 2021.
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This marks Turman’s return to ABC, where he recurred on How to Get Away with Murder. The role earned him his second guest actor in a drama series Emmy nomination; he won in 2008 for HBO’s In Treatment.
Turman is currently starring opposite Chris Rock in the current season of FX’s Fargo. Up next for him, he will star opposite Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman in Netflix’s acclaimed new movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.