Tiffany Haddish, Carmon Ejogo, and Blair Underwood join Octavia Spencer's Netflix drama

It’s been over a year since we heard about Madam CJ Walker, the upcoming Netflix drama from Octavia Spencer about the eponymous Black haircare mogul, but now it sounds like the project is moving forward. According to Variety, it’ll be a “limited series” (which just means “a short season” on Netflix), and bunch of big names have already signed on to appear. Spencer will be playing Walker/Sarah Breedlove, who will eventually go on to become the first Black woman to be a self-made millionaire in the United States (and this was in the late-1800s, just in case that’s not sufficiently impressive), but that seems more like a final episode thing than a basic premise thing.

Tiffany Haddish will be joining Spencer as Lelia, the “smart and feisty daughter” of Breedlove who marries a “feckless” man named John Robinson. Carmon Ejogo will be there as well, playing a “former friend” of Spencer’s character named Addie who is a “savvy businesswoman herself.” Blair Underwood will play Sarah Breedlove’s husband, Charles Joseph Walker, with Garrett Morris playing his father. The series, based on A’Lelia Bundles’ book On Her Own Ground, will hit Netflix in 2020.