Beyond the Gates, the first new soap opera to be greenlit in over 25 years, will premiere on CBS on February 24 with a host of familiar faces and plenty of drama. Created by veteran soap writer Michele Val Jean and set in the fictional Fairmont Estates in Maryland, BTG centers on the powerful and prestigious Dupree family, the people in their world, and the juicy secrets and scandals waiting to be uncovered.
In addition to the previously announced talent — Tamara Tunie (ex-Jessica Griffin, As The World Turns) as Anita Dupree, Clifton Davis as Vernon Dupree, Karla Mosley (ex-Maya Avant, The Bold and the Beautiful; ex-Christina Moore Boudreau, Guiding Light) as Dani Dupree, and Daphnée Duplaix (ex-Rachel Gannon, One Life to Live; ex-Valerie Davis, Passions) as Dr. Nicole Dupree Richardson) — popular soap favorites Jon Lindstrom (Kevin Collins, General Hospital) and three-time Daytime Emmy winner Cady McClain (ex-Dixie Cooney, All My Children; ex-Rosanna Cabot, ATWT; ex-Kelly Andrews, The Young and the Restless; ex-Jennifer Horton, Days of Our Lives), have been tapped to join the star-studded roster.
“I’m just so thrilled to be a part of this incredible cast and this amazing show,” says McClain, who will play Pamela Curtis. “I think it is so exciting. It’s such a beautiful production and such amazing actors, and I have the great pleasure of getting to work a great deal with Karla. We have so much fun —probably too much fun. We play very, very, very, very, very dear old friends, and we get up to a bit of trouble.”
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As for what drew Lindstrom, who will play Joey Armstrong, to the project, he says, “Michele Val Jean. Everybody knows that Michele is the best writer in the business, and they don’t want to admit it, especially if they’re another writer, but she is the very best in the business. And to be able to come down here to this brand-new studio and every day, every single member of this cast — this incredible cast — and this crew, who are so happy to walk through those doors every day and be a part of something, I think it is so groundbreaking. That’s the most special part of it all.”
Val Jean, who has toiled on a host of shows, including B&B, Generations, and GH, has been working on Beyond the Gates for decades, so to see it finally make it to air is a surreal experience. She credits Sheila Ducksworth, President, CBS/NAACP Production Venture, for helping to make her dream of a Black soap a reality. “The origin was over 20 years ago when I met Sheila Ducksworth through Vivica [A.] Fox [ex-Stephanie Simmons, Y&R],” Val Jean relays. “I’d created a nighttime pilot about a rich Black family, and Sheila read it, and she really liked it, and she said, ‘You know, I can’t do anything with this right now, but you and I are going to work together one day.’ So fast forward all these years later, she became the president of the CBS/NAACP Venture, and she called me and she said, ‘This is the time.’ And I said, ‘You know, I’m not sure I know how to do that.’ And she says, ‘Yeah, you do. You just don’t know you do.’ So, I didn’t think anything would come of it, because we all know how soaps have been canceled, not greenlit, so, I just figured it would be a nice COVID project. I kept writing my scripts for Bold and the Beautiful, and I worked on the Bible. And four years later, here we are, amazingly enough.”
Ducksworth says she was excited about the project from the moment she heard the pitch from Val Jean all those years ago. “What I really loved about the idea of this premise is that I love to work with things that are real and authentic,” she explains. “And many people don’t know that the DMV area — Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia — is one of the most affluent areas for Black Americans in the entire country. And it’s a place where many Black Americans are living in gated communities, on big, park-like grounds. I’m not a writer. That is Michele, writer, and creator. But the idea of a big sprawling Black family, in this area in the DMV where we could explore the upstairs and the downstairs of it all, and have it be really real and authentic and something that people can check the demographics and say, ‘This exists,’ was important in that regard. And yes, Michele was the only person that I really felt could capture that world, and she did it in a huge way.”
After getting the go-ahead for the series, casting began and Tamara Tunie — who hadn’t been on a soap scene since a brief appearance as Judge Weston on Days in 2011, but had great success in primetime on shows like Law & Order: SVU — was tapped to play matriarch Anita. “Back in September, end of August, I got a call from my rep saying, ‘There’s this new African American soap that they’re going to be shooting in Atlanta, and they’d like to offer you the role of the matriarch of the show,’” Tunie recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, let me read something, and then let me sleep on it.’ And so I woke up the next morning, and what was uppermost in my mind was the historic nature of this project, and the glass ceiling breaking of this project — to have an affluent African American family lead a daytime drama for the first time in history was very, very enticing to me.”
Tunie asked to speak to Val Jean and Ducksworth before she officially got on board, and when she heard who was in consideration to play her husband, she was even more intrigued. “Over a period of a week or two, whatever it was, we came to an agreement, and I joined the family,” she says. “And as soon as I joined the family, I sent an email to Michele and Sheila and said, ‘By the way, I just spent five days with Clifton Davis in Winston-Salem at the International Black Theater Festival. And if you’re still talking to him about Vernon Dupree, just know that we’ve connected, we’re friends, we’ve got a nice chemistry, and I’m just throwing it out there,’ and I left it at that. And so, a week or so after that, Clifton and I did a camera test together over Zoom, which was fun. And then the next morning he was Papa Dupree.”
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TV and film veteran Davis had to do some quick shuffling to make it to the set on time. “I got the call to confirm the role on Thursday, and I had to be in Atlanta on Monday,” he shares. “So I had to organize myself to find a hotel, to get an apartment, to start life in Atlanta. And with my darling wife’s assistance, Monica, I was able to do it and to show up. And I got to tell you, at my age, to get a job is a wonderful thing. My first television show was the Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show in 1972. I remember starting the first day of That’s My Mama on ABC in 1974. I remember starting Amen in 1986. I remember getting the recurring role that lasted five years on Madam Secretary in 2014.
“And here we are in 2024, 2025, doing another television show. That brought tears to my eyes just to look back and see how this business has advanced since those first days when African Americans’ jobs on Broadway and in television were few and far between. And to look around and see Black crew, Black writers, Black actors, and everything, it was overwhelming. And I am so humbled by this, and I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished. And as many years as I can give you, that’s what I’m going to do.”
For Karla Mosley, who lives in Los Angeles, her past relationship with Val Jean played a role in her accepting the part of Dani. “I have been friends with Michele since working on Bold and the Beautiful, and when she was working with Vivica [Fox], on Ambitions, she was always saying, ‘I’d love to rope you in on something,’ ” Mosley recalls. “You hear that in the industry time and time again, but then I saw her at her birthday party, and she said, ‘It’s happening, Karla, it’s really happening.’ And I was just over the moon for her and so excited. And she said, ‘It’s shooting in Atlanta.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not moving to Atlanta.’ But then, a couple months later when they were contacting people, they sent a script, and I read the script, and I read Dani, and I texted her, and I was like, ‘Damn it, Michele.’ And here I am.”
Duplaix says she waited weeks to find out whether she booked the role of Nicole — “I felt like I was being tortured,” she jokes — but when her team reached out with the news, it was worth the wait. “My manager sent me a test and he said, ‘Pop a bottle. It’s yours,’ ” she relays. “Just being an actor in this business, you want to do great work. It’s what we do. It’s what we have a passion for. And then when I really thought about the magnitude of what we were creating, what Sheila and Michele had put together, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is big. This is really big.’ And so I’ve just been so excited and so proud to be a part of this groundbreaking show.”
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Seeing the production go from the page to the stage was an overwhelming moment for Tunie and Co. “I’ve spent 40 years in this business, and the majority of that time, I’ve spent being the only Black person on a set,” Tunie concludes. “And so to walk into this production, which is not exclusively Black, but is predominantly Black, and to be shooting it here in Atlanta when there’s such a wealth of incredibly talented Black practitioners, whether it’s hair and makeup, whether it’s acting, whether it’s camera operating, whether it’s crew — to walk into the studio and see all of these extraordinarily beautiful Black faces and to walk into Black excellence on the level that this is overwhelmed me. It brought tears to my eyes, and all I could feel was absolute joy.”
Beyond the Gates will premiere on CBS on February 24. From February 17-21, CBS will air a five-part special, Beyond the Gates: Welcome to the Neighborhood, in BTG’s future time slot, 2 p.m. ET. Hosted by Sheryl Underwood and Entertainment Tonight‘s Kevin Frazier, the special will go behind the scenes and show how the new soap came to life, showcase the cast and sets, offer a sneak peek of what’s ahead and so much more.
Beyond the Gates, Series Premiere, Monday, February 24, CBS, Check Local Listings