Larry Wilmore will return to his late-night roots with Lately, a new ABC sitcom taking place behind the scenes of a late-night talk show. Wilmore will star, write, and produce the sitcom for Universal Television, according to a report from Deadline.
The new addition to ABC's stable of sitcoms is described as a "behind-the-scenes look at the upstairs-downstairs dynamics of the people who work at a late-night talk show". Wilmore is no stranger to both sides of that world. His late-night writing credits begin with Into the Night, a short-lived 1990 ABC talk show hosted by Rick Dees, of "Disco Duck" fame. Much later, he was featured as The Daily Show's acerbic "Senior Black Correspondent" opposite Jon Stewart from 2006 to 2014, and parlayed his success there into the panel show spin-off The Nightly Show. Taking over The Colbert Report's post-Daily Show Comedy Central time slot, Wilmore hosted The Nightly Show for two years before its cancelation in 2016 after Stewart's retirement led to a period of declining ratings. More recently, he hosted a talk show on Peacock, Wilmore.
Wilmore has extensive comedy experience both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. He wrote for In Living Color and Sister, Sister, and wrote and produced for The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Jamie Foxx Show, and The Office. He co-created the Eddie Murphy stop-motion sitcom The PJs and The Bernie Mac Show with the late Bernie Mac; the latter earned him an Emmy and a Peabody. In recent years, he created the Anthony Anderson-Tracee Ellis Ross sitcom Black-ish and its spinoff Grown-ish for ABC, co-created and produced the Issa Rae HBO comedy Insecure, and produced the Kerry Washington legal drama Reasonable Doubt for Hulu. He also guest-starred on The Office, Accidentally on Purpose, and Happy Endings; he recently appeared in the Bryan Cranston-Annette Bening dramedy Jerry and Marge Go Large. He hosted the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2016, and published a book of comedic essays, I'd Rather We Got Casinos, and Other Black Thoughts, in 2009. He also hosts Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air on the Ringer Podcast Network.
In addition to Wilmore, Lately will be executive produced by Tamara Gregory, Head of Television at Wilmore’s Wilmore Films. The project is part of a development deal Wilmore signed with Universal in 2019.
Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.