Patti LaBelle is guest starring on AB’s hit comedy The Wonder Years season 2. She joins as Shirley Williams, Bill Williams’ (Dulé Hill) mother. She’s currently signed on for two episodes.
Shirley, who is a church choir director, is described as “sweet as she can be but has another side to her when choir members don’t quite hit the right notes.” LaBelle is set for a two-episode arc as the character.
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The revival of the classic 1980s family comedy-drama is set in the same era as the original. It looks at how the Williamses, a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, AL, in the turbulent late 1960s made sure it was the Wonder Years for them too.
It centers on 12-year-old Dean Williams (Elisha “EJ” Williams). With the wisdom of his adult years (narrated by Don Cheadle), Dean’s hopeful and humorous recollections of his past spotlight the ups and downs of growing up in a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama, and the friendships, laughter, and lessons along the way.
Dulé Hill plays Bill, the patriarch who is a music professor by day and a funk musician by night, Saycon Sengbloh as his perceptive and good-humored wife, Lillian, with Laura Kariuki as Kim, Dean’s confident and popular teenage sister. Julian Lerner portrays as Brad Hitman, Amari O’Neil as Cory Long, and Milan Ray plays Keisa Clemmons. Allen Maldonado recurs as Coach Long, an affable guy who takes his job coaching a pre-teen baseball team very seriously.
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The Wonder Years season 2 is due to premiere at midseason. It won a Peabody Award for its first season, and showrunner Saladin K. Patterson was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for his pilot script.
Lee Daniels, Saladin K. Patterson, and Bob Daily executive produce from 20th Television, a part of Disney Television Studios.
LaBelle is a Grammy Award-winning singer whose film and TV credits include A Soldier’s Story, A Different World, American Horror Story, Empire, Star, and The Kominsky Method, as well as starred in her own TV series, Out All Night.
Up next she will be seen in Lifetime’s holiday movie A New Orleans Noel.