Courtney Lilly Adds ‘Mixed-ish’ Oversight to ‘Black-ish’ Showrunner Duties

Lilly will run both shows under his new overall deal with ABC Signature

Courtney Lilly
Greg Doherty/Getty Images

“black-ish” showrunner Courtney Lilly has added showrunning duties on the spinoff series “mixed-ish” as part of a new overall deal with ABC Signature, the studio announced Tuesday.

Lilly is currently overseeing the seventh season of the Kenya Barris-created ABC family comedy, while the spinoff series is heading into its second season.

Original “mixed-ish” showrunner Karen Gist, who is under an overall deal at ABC Signature’s sister studio, 20th Television, has stepped back to focus on her own development for the studio.

The new season of “black-ish” is set to premiere on Wednesday, following a collective lobbying effort from the show’s cast and producers earlier this year. The series was originally scheduled to return at midseason, but following the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, the network opted to move the premiere date back up.

In an interview with Deadine, which first broke the news of Lilly’s new role, the showrunner teased some of the hot-button issues that “black-ish” will tackle in the upcoming season.

“For us on black-ish, we’re always trying to stay on top of what families are talking about,” he said. “Tracee Ellis Ross’s character is a doctor, so she’s going to see the pandemic through a different lens than most of us who don’t work in the medical field are going to see it. Everybody who’s working from home with kids or families and responsibilities they’re going through their own kind of issues familiar to everybody. We’re going to be dealing with that. And also in the wake of the George Floyd protests, we’re going to be dealing with this family having conversations about that.”

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