Nine more actors are packing their bags for the Hamptons. Gail Bean (The Drop: A Snowfall Saga), Melanie Liburd (Bad Boys: Ride or Die), Harry Lennix (The Blacklist), Joy Bryant (Parenthood), Greg Tarzan Davis (Top Gun), Danielle Pinnock (Ghosts), Dewayne Perkins (The Studio), six-time Grammy winner Samara Joy and Tiffany Boone (Mufasa: The Lion King) have all been added to the cast of Netflix’s Women Like Us. Their characters are being kept under wraps for now.
The film centers on a woman who has recently lost her husband. Her sister and closest friends pull her away to the Hamptons on the weekend that should have marked her 30th wedding anniversary. What starts as a friends’ escape turns into a hard look at grief, at her marriage, and at the bond among the women who have stood by her for decades. By the end, she’s reminded that it’s never too late to chase a dream.
The new arrivals join a headlining group of Whoopi Goldberg, Jenifer Lewis, Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox, a lineup that doubles as two reunions. Goldberg and Lewis last shared the screen in Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, and Williams and Fox teamed up in the 1997 hit Soul Food.
Cameras are already rolling under director Tasha Smith, whose recent work includes Bel-Air, Harlem, Mayor of Kingstown and Survival of the Thickest. The script comes from Ali Kinney (Ginny & Georgia, Love Life), with additional writing by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, The Blackening).
The film is the first pairing of Charles D. King’s Macro Film Studios and the Obamas’ Higher Ground. King and Michelle Obama serve as executive producers, with James Lopez and Poppy Hanks producing for Macro and Anikah McLaren and Mark R. Wright producing for Higher Ground.
It joins a growing list of Netflix projects from Higher Ground, the company behind the Oscar-winning documentary American Factory. Also on the way are the series The Altruists and All the Sinners Bleed, and an untitled mother-daughter comedy starring Julianne Moore.
I moved Davis to the middle of the cast list and opened with the new actors instead of the studios. If you want it punchier or more casual, I can adjust the voice.