Source: Bernard Smalls / @PhotosByBeanz
Former B2K lead singer Omarion, who has his own successful solo career, is about to take on a new challenge. According to Deadline, the 38-year-old will soon star in Involved, a dramedy based on his own life coming to the AMC Network-owned streaming service, AllBlk (formerly the Urban Movie Channel).
The streaming site is also holding a national casting call for the series co-lead, which will be taking place at the 27th Annual American Black Film Festival, June 14-18 in Miami Beach.
According to the report, Omarion will play a singer named OB Sharp who has been a boyband superstar since childhood. Now on the verge of a worldwide tour, he secretly wants to leave the group to be a more present dad and have a better co-parenting relationship with his child’s mother, who lives in his guesthouse with her new boyfriend.
Actor Lance Gross (House of Payne) will serve as the celebrity reader for the casting call for the role of 31-year-old Shayla Williams who plays OB’s ex-girlfriend.
To further complicate matters, OB gets into a romantic entanglement with Maya—one of his best friends and still has to deal with Shayla, mother of his daughter, as well as a myriad of business ventures and drama.
“Just like multi-hyphenated entertainers Jamie Foxx, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith who all have influenced and inspired me and a whole culture, Involved is intended to inspire, shift and impact the culture of American society’s thinking and understanding of special family dynamics. There is no better way for us to learn about and observe these cultural diversities than through the medium of entertainment,” Omarion told Deadline.
He will executive produce the series alongside co-creators Tommy Morgan Jr., Kevin G. Boyd and Deji LaRay. The pilot is being written by Kevin G. Boyd and directed by Bentley Kyle Evans, who will serve as co-showrunners. Michelle Le Fleur will also executive produce alongside AllBlk’s SVP of Development & Production Nikki Love and the company’s general manager, Brett Dismuke.
Dismuke told Deadline, “Omarion is an expert storyteller across multiple mediums, and we could not be more excited to further our partnership by helping him bring this story to life on AllBlk. As a leader in programming by and for Black voices, we know our audience will appreciate such an intriguing and compelling story.”
