“Bob Hearts Abishola” may be dead at CBS, but there’s nothing preventing it from going to another network. Series co-creator and executive producer Gina Yashere revealed that the comedy could be shopped around during a panel and set visit during the Television Critics Association’s 2024 winter tour.
“I’m leaving that to Chuck [Lorre] because he’s the boss. But we’re hoping. There’s nothing that can stop someone else picking up the show and continuing the legacy, and I’m all for it,” Yashere told TheWrap. “I’ll be here ready with my laptop, ready to take the show to whoever wants it next. Netflix, where are ya?”
Yashere noted that she was “grateful” that CBS let the the team know about the cancellation even though filming this final season has been “bittersweet.”
“Some shows they end, they go into hiatus, and they don’t know whether they’re coming back or not. So you see shows that end, and you don’t get the same amount of satisfaction because they didn’t know,” Yashere said. “We can tie up some loose ends, continue stories and do some stuff that we might have pushed back to the following season.”
The CBS comedy has had a rocky road as of late. The series was renewed for a fifth season in January of 2023 but with the caveat that 11 of the show’s 13 main cast members would be downgraded to recurring stars. According to Yashere, the EPs learned CBS was cancelling the multi-cam comedy at the beginning of Season 5. She also noted she wasn’t given an explicit reason for its cancellation.
“Our show is successful, it’s one of the top comedies on television. So for me, personally, I was like, I don’t get it. We’ve still got so many stories to tell. There’s still this huge appetite for what we do, and our audience is building,” Yashere said.
In fact, the first three seasons of the series were added to the Warner Bros. Discovery streaming platform Max in 2022.
“Who knows? They might bring us back in five years or whatever,” Yashere said. “But that’s not the end of me as a writer and a producer. I’ve got other stories to tell. I’ve got a memoir that I wrote based on my life, and I’m working on a pilot based on that, so there will be more stories. This is not the end of me. This is not the end of Nigerian stories. This is not the end of fresh stories from a different perspective.”