“The Cosby Show” alum Malcolm-Jamal Warner has acquired the film and television rights to Russell Duncan’s novel Freedom’s Shore: Tunis Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen.
Freedom’s Shore tells the story of Tunis Campbell, a Black Northern abolitionist minister who became a senator and vice president of the Republican Party of Georgia after the Civil War to help former slaves transition to free men and women. Warner also is expected to produce and star in the upcoming project.
“Tunis Campbell was a staunch defender of human rights and was one of the earliest activists in the fight against voter suppression in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era. He was a movement unto himself. Civil rights, Black Power and Black Lives Matter a hundred-plus years before those movements were labeled as such. Excited can only begin to describe how I feel about bringing this unsung hero’s life to the screen,” Warner told Deadline.
Warner also recently spoke with The Undefeated and revealed that all the characters he’s portrayed have to reflect Black males in a positive light, and that stems from his start in the industry on “The Cosby Show.”
“It goes back to my experience on ‘Cosby’ and with Cosby, but also I have to take it back to my father who named me after Malcom X and jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal,” he explained. “It wasn’t until I was about 15 until I understood what he did, and I was like, ‘Dude, you set me up.’ You can’t be named after those two men and not be about something.”
“My experience on ‘Cosby’ and it being a groundbreaking show that expanded White America and the global view of who we are as Black people, I’ve just been intent [about] not doing work that’s going to spread negative stereotypes of who we are. I also don’t do as much as work as I could because it’s a lot of work I just will not do, but I also understand that everyone doesn’t have that option to be saying no to stuff.”
Warner is currently a series regular on Fox’s hit medical drama “The Resident,” which recently was renewed for a fifth season.
