Aziza Barnes, Jeremy O. Harris Join HBO’s ‘The Vanishing Half’ Series As Writers & Will Exec Produce With Issa Rae & Stephanie Allain
Deadline is reporting that Aziza Barnes (BLKS) and Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play), have signed on as writers and executive producers on drama The Vanishing Half, based on Brit Bennett’s bestselling novel, which is in currently in development as a series at HBO. Issa Rae and her Hoorae production banner and Stephanie Allain’s Homegrown Pictures also have joined as executive producers.
In The Vanishing Half, the twin Vignes sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, the essence of who they are. Ten years later, they are living completely separate lives, far from the close-knit sisters they once were…and with many secrets that divide them further. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen when the most unexpected path brings one sister back to the town from which they ran away?
Barnes and Harris will executive produce with Bennett. Rae, Montrel McKay and Sara Rastogi will executive produce for Hoorae, along with Allain and Gabrielle Ebron for Homegrown Pictures.
Barnes started out as a playwright with their play BLKS produced at Steppenwolf Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater and MCC Theater. Barnes was recently in the mini-room for BET’s Lena Waithe series Birth of Cool and in the God’s Soldiers mini-room for Ben Watkins and HBO, where they are already developing Pride, a Jane Austen update to Pride and Prejudice.
Harris, as part of his overall deal with HBO, is currently developing at HBO an Untitled Pilot based on his Yale Drama Graduate Thesis. He’s an executive producer on the project along with A24. Additionally, Harris is returning to the HBO series Euphoria and will serve as co-producer. His play Slave Play, which opened on Broadway in fall 2019, was a New York Times Critics Pick, winner of the 2018 Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award. He co-wrote A24’s upcoming film Zola with director Janicza Bravo.
The novel was published on June 2, 2020 by Penguin Random House, and became a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, Barnes & Noble June Book Club Pick, and Amazon Best Book of June.