Showtime on Wednesday gave viewers their first peek at “The Chi,” the long-awaited drama series created by Emmy winner and local success story Lena Waithe.
The show, shot entirely in Chicago, is scheduled to premiere Jan. 7. Actor and rapper Common is among its executive producers and is glimpsed in the trailer.
The cable channel called the series, centered on the South Side, “a timely coming-of-age story centering on a group of residents who become linked by coincidence but bonded by the need for connection and redemption.”
The ensemble cast includes Jason Mitchell (“Straight Outta Compton”), Jacob Latimore (“Sleight”), Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (“Queen of Katwe”), Alex Hibbert (“Moonlight”), Yolonda Ross (“Treme,” “The Get Down”), Armando Riesco (“Bull”) and Tiffany Boone (“The Following”).
Set to the song “Devil’s Whisper” by Raury, the trailer jumps between scenes of innocent day-to-day life (a dance team practicing, girls jumping rope, two men happily relaxing on a patch of grass) with tenser situations (a woman aims a shotgun, an angry young man throws something as he leaves a store). The main characters are introduced, each looking more sober than the last.
Waithe, a regular on Netflix’s “Master of None,” won applause from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other viewers for her spirited acceptance speech at last month’s Emmy Awards, where she and the show’s creator, Aziz Ansari, shared a writing award for an episode that drew from Waithe’s own experience coming out as gay.
“The things that make us different, those are our superpowers,” she said. “Every day when you walk out the door, put on your imaginary cape and go out there and conquer the world because the world would not be as beautiful as it is without us in it.”
“The Chi” has been in the works since 2015, when director Clark Johnson made a pilot in Chicago. By the time the series was picked up earlier this year, “Dope” director Rick Famuyiwa had come aboard to shoot a new premiere episode.
Filming continued over the spring and summer in Chicago.
