Kevin and Scotty Moving From “Brothers & Sisters” to African-American Spin-off

Think Kevin’s partner Scotty has put up with a lot of family drama on ABC’s Sunday night show Brothers & Sisters?

This fall, Kevin will be the one putting up with Scotty’s family drama in Brothas & Sistahs, a spin-off version of the show that will include Kevin and Scotty as part of the ensemble cast.

But Scotty’s family won’t be the conservative, anti-gay couple previously featured on the show. Instead, they’ll be black.

The pilot episode of Brothas & Sistahs reveals that Scotty was adopted and his biological parents are African-American, making Scotty a very light-skinned black. The first episode involves Scotty discovering and actively embracing his heritage while fussy Kevin is something of a fish-out-of-water in a family very different from his own.

“We’re currently fitting Luke MacFarlane [who plays Scotty] with a Kente cloth robe,” said Nina Hensley, formerly an executive producer on Brothers & Sisters and now the showrunner on Brothas & Sistahs. “He looks great – articulate and bright and clean and even lighter-skinned than Obama!”

“The producers pitched us a spin-off version of the show centering on a second family of Los Angeles brothers and sisters,” said Veronica Miles, President of Prime Time Programming at ABC. “But we’d been wanting to do a family drama with a predominantly African-American cast. When we suggested combining the two shows, the producers were thrilled.”

“In retrospect, having Scotty turn out to be black made perfect sense,” Hensley agreed. “Two years ago, we even did an episode where Scotty cooks collard greens!”

Scotty’s newfound black relatives on the show include a couple who have built a successful dry-cleaning franchise and are moving on up into a deluxe condo in Beverly Hills.

They’ll be played by Vivica Fox and, in his much-anticipated return to television, Martin Lawrence, who, in a dual role, will also play their sassy black maid.

Another of Scotty’s black brothers, played by Isaiah Washington, operates a junkyard in Watts with his son, although Hensley points out that Washington has contractually insisted that his character only deal with any gay characters via cellphone, so he and his TV brother Scotty will never actually be seen on screen together.

The son has not yet been cast, but Miles promises, “He’ll be cute. Really, really cute.”

As with the original Brothers & Sisters, two of the show’s primary features will be multi-person cell phone conversations and contentious dinner parties.

“I know all about black dinners,” Hensley said. “One of the girls at my sorority was black, and once I had Thanksgiving at her house. They had a turkey and everything!”

Rather than drink wine, Scotty’s family will drink wine coolers.