What to Know About Sterling K. Brown's ‘Washington Black': From Cast Details to Book Connections

Yahoo

2 days ago

Fans waiting for season 2 of Paradise can get their Sterling K. Brown fix with his upcoming Hulu series, Washington Black.
Brown has remained booked and busy since wrapping up his time on NBC's This Is Us. He reunited with creator Dan Fogelman to work on Hulu's political thriller Paradise, which premiered in January 2025. The show received critical acclaim and was renewed one month later.
Before filming Paradise, however, Brown partnered up with Selwyn Seyfu Hinds to produce a TV adaptation of Esi Edugyan's novel Washington Black. The 2019 book follows George Washington Black (Eddie Karanja and Ernest Kingsley Jr.) through past and present timelines as he is raised under the shadow of slavery before catching the attention of the sugar plantation owner's brother.
A young Washington is recruited to help the owner's brother, leading to an adventure around the world. Washington in present day goes by Wash and lives in Nova Scotia, where he is taken under the wing of town leader Medwin Harris (Brown).
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"The book is written in Wash's first person, recollective voice," Hinds told Entertainment Weekly in May 2025. "When I first read the book and started thinking about how to adapt it, the structure that I really thought about was The Canterbury Tales and this voyage of this boy who becomes a man through all these characters who affect him and who he affects."
Keep scrolling for everything to know about Washington Black:
Who Is Starring in 'Washington Black'?
In addition to Kingsley Jr., Brown and Katanga, Washington Black stars Tom Ellis, Iola Evans, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Billy Boyd, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine and Edward Bluemel. Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Rupert Graves, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Charles Dance and Blaine Dorey make up the rest of the cast.
What Is 'Washington Black' About?
Based on the book of the same name, Washington Black follows an 11-year-old boy who "is forced to flee his home on a sugar plantation in Barbados after a shocking death." The boy ultimately finds a mentor who has "a traumatic childhood as a Black refugee in Nova Scotia."
When Does 'Washington Black' Premiere?
All eight episodes of Washington Black will be released on July 23, 2025.
How Much of the Show Will Be Based on the Book?
The show will have a major shift when it comes to the timeline.
"If we told the story linearly, we wouldn't get to adult Wash until episode 7," Hinds told EW. "So the structure suggested itself."
Showrunner Kimberly Ann Harrison broke down the decision, adding, "We wanted to show Wash's origin story because that is really important. So those two timelines of showing the boy that he was, and then, the man he grows into were really important to us."
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What Role Does Sterling K. Brown Play?
"The thing about Sterling is he's not some kind of diva movie star who's like, 'Write me a gigantic role.' It was what's going to serve the story best. It took me a couple of months to really figure out that so much of this tale is about mentorship, who you mentor and who you're mentored by," Hinds shared. "I realized that we needed a counterpoint to [his mentor] Titch's relationship with Wash for the adult version of Wash. We already had that character in the book in Medwin, so from there it was just building it out."
Brown balanced his starring role with being an executive producer.
"He was in Video Village, he was giving notes to the actors," Harrison recalled. "I had never really encountered that — to see an actor really step into that producer role the way that he did with problem solving, budget talk. It was great to work with him as both an actor and on the producer level.
What Is the Message of 'Washington Black'?
"A lot of these conversations around identity, around race, around tribalism, they're always here," Hinds noted to EW. "It is just a matter of sometimes there's a piece of art that brings them up to the volume where we all hear them and are aware of them."
Harrison, meanwhile, elaborated on the theme of the series. "There's who people think you're supposed to be and who, when you question your own identity, you choose to be," she noted. "We're in a place where people are starting to question and ask those questions where they might not have before."
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