EXCLUSIVE: Jessie Williams has boarded the Wayfarer Studios, Misfits Entertainment and Mediawan documentary, Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story, as EP.
Williams joins alongside Alicia Keys and recording artist Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean who we previously told you about. UTA is representing North American sales on the docu while Mediawan Rights is handling the rest of the world.
The Yemi Bamiro directed feature documentary, Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story, centers around photographer and activist Kwame Brathwaite, who helped ignite the transformative “Black Is Beautiful” movement. Starting from Harlem in the 1950’s and working until his death in 2023, Brathwaite took half a million photos including many of “regular” people on the street but also thousands of intimate and unexpected photos of stars including Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, Marvin Gaye, Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, and the Jackson Five. Brathwaite’s photography captured sublime moments across fashion, activism, music, and art in a 60 year-plus career.
“The work of Kwame Brathwaite sits atop an expanded definition of activism. He showed us that affirming Black beauty, archiving our truth and culture while shaping how we see ourselves in time, is also resistance. That’s why I joined this incredible filmmaking team; cultural work is forever frontline work that doesn’t just challenge aesthetics, it challenges power. Together, we can amplify a legacy that carries our narrative forward by highlighting its foundation,” said Williams.
Williams is currently shooting season 5 of Apple TV’s award-winning The Morning Show opposite Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass. He’s playing Vernon, the newest head of UBN news. Williams is a 2022 Tony nominee in the Featured Actor Play category for his Broadway debut in the Tony-winning Take Me Out. The star of Amazon Prime’s Hotel Costiera, Max’s The Great Lillian Hall and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, has produced such projects as the 2020 Academy Award-winning short Two Distant Strangers (Netflix), Norman Lear’s EPIX docuseries America Divided and the 2025 Sundance short Hoops, Hopes and Dreams, which premiered on Hulu this past January. He is known for his long-running role as Dr. Jackson Avery on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.
Williams also joins Wayfarer Studios’ CEO Jamey Heath and Misfits Entertainment’s Andee Ryder as EPs on the docu along with Robin Bronk for The Creative Coalition and Kwame S Brathwaite and Robynn Brathwaite on behalf of The Kwame Brathwaite Archive. Producers include Andrew Calof on behalf Wayfarer Studios, Joanna Boateng, Ian Bonhôte and Lizzie Gillett for Misfits, Mediawan Rights and Entourage Media.