Diane Guerrero’s harrowing memoir, detailing the deportation of her parents and brother when she was just 14-years-old, has inspired a new drama coming soon to primetime television.
Jane the Virgin recurring guest star Diane Guerrero has partnered with three key auspices behind the CW dramedy — executive producer/showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, executive producer Ben Silverman and executive producer/writer Paul Sciarrotta — for In the Country We Love, a drama project that has been set up at CBS.
Guerrero is attached to star in the drama, based on her memoir. Jane producer CBS TV Studios, where Urman is under an overall deal, is the studio.
Written by Sciarrotta, In the Country We Lovecenters on a successful corporate attorney who starts taking pro bono cases for undocumented immigrants after her past as the child of deported parents is revealed by a family emergency.
Sciarrotta, Urman and Guerrero executive produce alongside Silverman though his new company, Propagate Content.
Guerrero’s memoir In the Country We Love: My Family Divided, co-written with bestselling author Michelle Burford, chronicles Guerrero’s harrowing experience as a teenager. She was 14 when her parents were taken from their Boston home by immigration agents and deported to their native Colombia while she was at school. From then on, Guerrero, who was born in the U.S., had to rely on the kindness of family friends.
This is the second broadcast drama project in development for next season that touches on the hot-button issue of immigration, along with the CW’s Casa,from Warner Bros TV and Berlanti Prods.
Since sharing her story, Guerrero has emerged as a leading voice in the call to improve the broken US immigration system. She’s been encouraging everyone, particularly Latinos, to vote for pro-immigration reform candidates in this year’s election.
Now with news that CBS will be bringing her memoir to primetime television for all audiences to see, it continues to affirm that our stories are in fact American stories — and that’s a real victory.
