No major network or streamer has a new scripted series led by a Black woman over 50, even as 95% of Black adults say that representation matters.
By EEW Magazine Online Entertainment Editors
Viola Davis attends the premiere of The Mastermind at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in France on May 23, 2025. (Photo: JB Lacroix/FilmMagic)
Viola Davis has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. This year, the 61-year-old has no on-camera role in any new movie or television series, and the HBO Max drama built around her DC Comics character, Amanda Waller, was reportedly taken out of active development.
Her absence sits at the center of a Women’s Media Center analysis published Sept. 25, which found that none of the major U.S. broadcast networks has a new scripted series for the 2026-27 season led on screen by a Black woman over 50.
Streaming offers no alternative. The analysis found no new original scripted series with a Black woman over 50 in a leading role across Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV, Paramount+ and Peacock. NBC, Fox and PBS have no scripted series of any kind, new or returning, led by a Black woman in that age group.
The shortage arrives as Black viewers say they want more of these stories. In an AARP survey of 1,801 Black adults conducted in June, 95% said it is important to see Black women 50 and older represented on screen, and 54% said seeing them has made them feel more positive about their own aging. Only one-quarter said portrayals of Black women are accurate.
Several of the shows that once filled that space are gone. Prime Video canceled Ride or Die, starring Octavia Spencer, in September, two months after its July premiere. CBS ended The Equalizer in May 2025 after five seasons, closing Queen Latifah’s run as a former CIA operative at the center of a network action drama.
Octavia Spencer arrives at the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, on April 18, 2026. (Photo: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
Netflix’s The Upshaws, featuring Wanda Sykes and Kim Fields, aired its final episodes in January. Earlier cancellations include ABC’s The Rookie: Feds, led by Niecy Nash-Betts, and Bounce’s Act Your Age, with Tisha Campbell, Kym Whitley and Yvette Nicole Brown.
Cancellations are routine in television. The Women’s Media Center’s concern is what replaces them, and so far the networks have chosen other leads.
Davis has spoken about the pressure that age places on actresses. In an interview for AARP’s September digital issue, she said women in Hollywood over 40 and then over 50 can feel as though they have “fallen off a cliff,” though she added that she believes her own value is rising.
In August, Paramount+ greenlit Ascent, a thriller in which she will star as corporate fixer Catriona Vail and serve as executive producer through JuVee Productions, the company she runs with her husband, Julius Tennon. Production begins in Los Angeles in 2027. Davis and Regina King also appear in the ensemble of Paramount Pictures’ Children of Blood and Bone, due in theaters Jan. 15, 2027, with Davis as Mama Agba and King as Queen Nehanda.
Other Black actresses over 50 have taken the same route. According to the Women’s Media Center, Angela Bassett, Taraji P. Henson, Halle Berry, King, Spencer and Queen Latifah run their own production companies. Henson signed a first-look deal with Fox Entertainment in 2025, and Lifetime has producing deals with Mary J. Blige, Tisha Campbell, Queen Latifah and Henson, among others.
A handful of established series continue to give older Black actresses central roles. Bassett leads ABC’s 9-1-1, which opened its 10th season Oct. 15 with her character, Athena Grant, newly working as a detective.
Angela Bassett attends the opening night of Othello at the Barrymore Theatre in New York on March 23, 2025. (Photo: Bruce Glikas/WireImage)
Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams stars in The Ms. Pat Show, which moved to Paramount+ after BET+ shut down this year. Tamara Tunie leads the ensemble of CBS’s daytime drama Beyond the Gates, and Sheryl Lee Ralph remains a cornerstone of ABC’s Abbott Elementary as veteran teacher Barbara Howard. All four are returning shows.
The broader numbers point the same direction. San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film reported that women created 24% of original U.S. streaming series in the 2025-26 season, down from 36% the year before. Women made up 44% of major characters on streaming programs, down from 49%, and 46% on broadcast, down from 47%. Those figures cover women of every age and race.
The women in this story are still building careers in their 50s and 60s. Whether the next television season makes room for them is now up to the networks and streamers.