Dulé Hill and EJ Williams talk about new series – Deadline

ABC’s revival The good years is gearing up to premiere on September 22, and the network released the first trailer above.

His new incarnation follows the middle-class black Williams family in Montgomery, AL, through the turbulent late 1960s. Dean Williams (Elisha “EJ” Williams) is the 12-year-old at the center of the shift to story. adulthood and Don Cheadle narrates as the voice of adult Dean.

Her family consists of her parents, Bill (Dulé Hill) and Lillian (Saycon Sengbloh), and her siblings Kim (Laura Kariuki) and Brad (Julian Lerner).

The series will include real moments from the history of the time such as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Fred Savage, star of the original The good years, directed the premiere and executive production of the new The good years, alongside creator Saladin K. Patterson, Lee Daniels and Marc Velez who are also EPs.

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“Being able to look back to that time and learn more, then piece it back together – I’m not going to lie, I cried,” Elisha “EJ” Williams said during the show’s panel at the TCA Thursday. “Dean’s point of view and my learning were two different situations. For me, it was hard to deal with even though I’ve already learned about the time, but when you’re immersed in a situation you think of things you would never have thought of before, like the death of Dr. King.

Hill added, “What comes to mind is that although things have changed, they have remained the same. As tragic as Dr. King’s passing, there are still so many tragedies unfolding between now and then and still happening today. This is what interested me in exploring this period: if you see the trauma and you see the pain, you also see the strength of the people of that time and you reflect on where we are now and you see that same strength, that same power, and the same courage to move forward that has always been there for people like me.

Allen Maldonado also joined the cast in July as Coach Long, an affable guy who takes his job coaching a pre-teen baseball team very seriously. Long’s son Tony and Dean both play on his team. It is not yet known whether Long is Afro-Latino like Maldonado.

“What I’ll say about the casting is that we really wanted to represent the Blackness diaspora for sure,” Patterson said. “And part of that is in appearance and in appearance, but part of it is just in the background and these individual stories that come from these mixtures of cultures. It certainly fits into this picture that we want to put in place. What was most important about the cast of Allen was that he’s a fantastic comedic actor who can also handle the grounded moments and gravity that we need as well.

It was also revealed Thursday morning that Savage and his colleague Original The good years her classmates Danica McKellar and Dan Lauria will make appearances in the conners, Domestical economy, and The Goldbergs, respectively, on October 13.