Malcolm-Jamal Warner, a former cast member of “The Cosby Show,” Russell Duncan’s novel Freedom’s Shore: Tunis Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen has been optioned for cinema and television by Warner Bros.
Tunis Campbell, a Black Northern abolitionist clergyman 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, is the subject of the film Freedom’s Shore. Warner is also rumored to be producing and starring in the future film.
“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 recently spoke with The Undefeated about how all of the characters he’s played have to show Black men in a positive manner, which originates from his early days in the profession 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 presently a series regular on Fox’s smash medical drama “The Resident,” which has just received a fifth season renewal.
