![]() ![]() Just a few months after “Girls Trip” premiered, Oliver was tapped to write a redeveloped television pilot adaptation of the 1996 film “First Wives Club.” Her version received a series order in April 2018, and she went to work on those 10 scripts. It hasn’t been a straight shot between the two projects, though. “‘Girls Trip’ needed to happen to let me do the thing that I really felt the closest to.” “All of a sudden people are like, ‘What happened to that script?'” Oliver says. ![]() So she tucked it away until “Girls Trip” came out in July 2017. When she first wrote the script for “Harlem,” she remembers receiving acknowledgement that it “was a beautiful writing sample” but nothing more. She also had her own complicated relationship timing issues with an ex who ended up engaged to someone else, leaving her wondering why “I don’t have any of the shit Julia Roberts said I’m supposed to have, and I’m not even close.” While those specific examples found their way into Camille’s arc for the first season of “Harlem,” on a broader level, she wanted the show to feature women who are “still figuring it out in their 30s” and to show that it’s OK to do so. I felt just uncertain and insecure and unstable,” she recalls. ![]() “There was nothing that said I would have a steady check coming in. When Oliver first penned the script, she was used to facing rejection professionally: She had never sold a show, let alone signed an overall deal. And it blew my mind when it was imploding so epically.” I really thought I was going to have a Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, except Black, existence. “She was always a realist and never romanticized anything, so I truly don’t know where I got this idea from. “With Camille and myself as well, I really thought that everything would just work out the way you wanted - and I don’t know where that entitlement came from because my mom, especially, is not very nice,” Oliver says with a laugh. She is also having a hard time letting go of complicated feelings for her ex (Tyler Lepley), who is not only engaged to someone else, but also the chef at a newly gentrified restaurant in the neighborhood. In the series, Camille is struggling to win over her new boss (Whoopi Goldberg) in order to receive a promotion for which she feels she was a shoo-in under the old regime (Andrea Martin). I wrote this for free I wrote this because I had to - at that moment there was just something in me that needed to write something so personal,” Oliver tells Variety.Īlthough “Harlem” follows a quartet of characters (played by Meagan Good, Grace Byers, Shoniqua Shandai and Jerrie Johnson), it is Good’s Camille who is most modeled after Oliver’s own life, both personally and professionally. This is why this is such a passion project and so close to me. “I wrote it before ‘Girls Trip’ came out. ![]()
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