When I first saw the news that a scripted TV show was being made about the rapper Nicki Minaj, my first thought was that it might be on Cartoon Network. You can envision it, right? The various personalities Minaj has constructed through her music—the unhinged Roman Zolanski, the brash Nicki Lewinsky, the sweet Harajuku Barbie—rendered in zany, anime-inflected colors, like Samurai Jack or The Powerpuff Girls or the “Only” video, with fewer Nazi overtones.
But the show that’s actually being made is a live-action sitcom on ABC Family that “will focus on Minaj’s growing up in Queens in the 1990s with her vibrant immigrant family and the personal and musical evolution that lead to her eventual rise to stardom,” Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva reports. Kate Angelo, who penned the 2014 Cameron Diaz/Jason Segel comedy Sex Tape, will write it; Minaj will executive-produce and act in it.
The show, no doubt, represents another front in Minaj’s efforts as “a business, woman,” sitting alongside holdings in perfume and alcohol that keep her on the Forbes annual list of wealthiest rappers. It’s also a fairly on-brand move for ABC Family, whose other programming—including the warmly reviewed lesbian family drama The Fosters (executive produced by another American Idol judge, Jennifer Lopez) and the wildly popular mystery series Pretty Little Liars—appeals to young people, especially women.