Words by Jillian Bowe
Woody McClain is once again suiting up to play Bobby Brown for BET. McClain has joined the network’s upcoming miniseries, The Bobby Brown Story. According to Deadline, McClain who starred as the singer in network’s ratings smash New Edition Story, teams up again with NE writer Abdul Williams and executive producer Jesse Collins who have both joined the project.
The movie will chronicle Brown’s departure from the uber-popular 80s boy band, his affair with Janet Jackson, along with his life from the mean streets of Roxbury, MA where Brown slung drugs before he became a solo artist. From 1988-1992, Brown gained eight consecutive top 10 hit singles but things started to turn downward after he married the late singer Whitney Houston in 1992.
Brown became tabloid fodder after he was arrested several times throughout the 90s and 2000s while he and Houston battled substance abuse. The two finally divorced in 2007. Five years later, Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 2012, the night before the 2012 Grammy Awards. Three years later, Brown and Houston’s only child Bobbi Kristina would be found in an eerily similar manner submerged in a bathtub and remained in a coma for six months and died in July 2015.
While the movie will deal with the dark periods of Brown’s life, BET revealed the film will also showcase how the singer redeemed his life by becoming sober and being a better husband and father to his kids and remarried in 2012. So far, McClain is the only person cast in key roles as the network is currently searching for actors to play, Houston, Bobbi Kristina, Jackson, Babyface, L.A. Reid, Teddy Riley and more. Look for the film to air in 2018.
