The hit show Underground which showed the trials as slaves tried to escape to freedom was recently cancelled by WGN after two critically acclaimed seasons and executive producer John Legend reached out to Oprah Winfrey to see if he could find a home for his show on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network.
Oprah talked about trying to save the series during a roundtable discussion of the upcoming new season of Queen Sugar and revealed that it was even too expensive for her loaded purses. The Queen of Media revealed, “I can’t afford Underground. It cost twice as much to make as Queen Sugar. As a matter of fact, my dear friend John Legend called me personally and asked me about it, but we’d already been talking about how we could make it work, but it’s, like, $5 million an episode, so we can’t afford it. It’s not cheap, I think because it’s a period piece.”
In a world where social media influence seems to negate truth in numbers, Oprah Winfrey also wasn’t impressed with Underground’s ratings although it made an impact on forums like Twitter and Facebook. She added, ”We really tried to make it work. I wanted to make it work because I think it’s a good show. I wanted to be able to save that show, but it did not make good business sense for me.”
Underground was indeed a good show but as coonery and reality based shows dictate the current landscape, we hope that it finds a new home.
