Paul Feig’s Digital Media Company’s First Original Series Is About Muslim American Women

Paul Feig’s digital media production company, Powderkeg, announced its first original series.

Called East of La Brea, the show will focus on two Muslim American roommates in their twenties living in Los Angeles. The two stars, according to The Hollywood Reporter, will be Aisha Hassan, a black Muslim, and Farha Munshi, who is a Bangladeshi-American.

Feig will executive produce the series along with Laura Fischer, also from Powderkeg, and Sameer Gardezi, who created the series. Gardezi has written for shows including Modern Family, Mind of Mencia, and Aliens in America.

To create East of La Brea, Gardezi received a grant from the Pop Culture Collaborative, which seeks to further social justice work by supporting stories about “people of color, immigrants, refugees, and Muslims in the media,” according to the organization’s website. The Pop Culture Collaborative is part of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

“I’m beyond excited to be a part of this process and hope we can continue to build a pipeline for underrepresented voices both in front and behind the camera,” Gardezi said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m interested in growing diversity, not injecting it.”

In addition to East of La Brea, Feig has been behind several other series and movies with a female-centric cast. He executive produced Bridesmaids, starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, and Rose Byrne in 2011 and the so-called “female Ghostbusters” (Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) also starring Wiig and McCarthy along with Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon in 2016. Feig is set to direct Freeform’s upcoming Girls Code, about an all-female tech incubator.