Lee Daniels is officially on fire. In the six years since Precious blew America’s collective mind, he’s gone on to direct Forest Whitaker in The Butler, shake up primetime TV with his minority-driven music biz soap Empire, and now he’s rapidly approaching Shonda Rhimes status with yet another TV pilot in development. This one is yet again about the music industry, but switches focus from the Shakespearean lives of royal powerbrokers to the gritty struggles of an up-and-coming girl group intent on making themselves heard. Co-written by Daniels and Tom Donaghy, the untitled Fox pilot has already confirmed starring turns by Benjamin Bratt and Queen Latifah, and the production has recently announced the addition of San Antonio-born Nicholas González.
Bratt will play a music agent who’s fallen from grace and is betting on his new clients as his ticket back to the mountaintop, while Latifah plays an Atlantic beauty salon owner who acts as a surrogate mother to the three girls. For his part, we do not yet have details on González’s role. Bratt was last seen on network TV in 2014 as station chief Steve Navarro in Season 9 of Fox’s 24: Live Another Day. González may be recognizable for his unending stream of bit parts and recurring roles, most recently as Marco Esquivel on Jane the Virgin and Dante Ramon on The Flash, but if Daniels’ latest project gets picked up for a full season, the 39-year-old Stanford grad may finally be looking at his first principal role since HBO’s Resurrection Boulevard.