Jean-Michel Basquiat’s limited series features Stephan James in the lead role
Stephan James will star in and produce a new limited series about the life and work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1980s New York.
A new limited series centered on the life and work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat will be in the spotlight Stephan James. The series will be set in 1980s New York and follow the rise of Basquiat’s career from graffiti artist to neo-expressionist painter, whose work now sells for millions of dollars. Neo-Expressionism, which focuses on the depiction of discernible objects and figures, arose as a response to highly intellectualized abstract art in the 1970s.
James (Race, If Beale Street Could Talk) is not only set to star in the limited series, but is also attached as a producer. James and Shamier Anderson (Stowaway, Invasion) co-founded Bay Mills Studios in 2021, which will co-produce the series with Boat Rocker Studios. James forwarded to Deadline his excitement about the opportunity to play Basquiat. A full quote can be read below:
“Jean-Michel is an artist I have long revered, and someone who has greatly influenced my work over the years. To embody such a revolutionary, whose influence in the modern era of pop culture is simply immeasurable , will quite simply be one of the greatest honors of my career.”
Basquiat was a known friend of Andy Warhol, who the series will also include as a character. With which actor will play Warhol and will he share the screen? Stephan James is not yet announced. Basquiat became one of the youngest artists, at 22, to have his work exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York. A look back in the next series at how Basquiat achieved such notoriety, as well as some of the subjects of his art, including social commentary on his experiences as a black man in the 1980s, which continue to be relevant today, should offer an intriguing new series for viewers to watch.
Sources: Deadline
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