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Colin Kaepernick Limited Series From Ava DuVernay & Netflix Scores ‘The Get Down’s Jaden Michael In Lead Role

Ava DuVernay and Colin Kaepernick have found their young man.

Jaden Michael will portray the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback as a teenager in the limited series Colin in Black & White. The former NFL star and social justice activist will executive produce the six-episode Netflix project with Emmy-nominated When They See Us boss DuVernay and scribe Michael Starrbury.

DuVernay will direct the first episode, with Kaepernick set to narrate.

Focusing on Kaepernick’s adolescence and early football, basketball and baseball successes in Turlock, CA, Colin in Black & White will put specific emphasis on the influences and circumstances that developed the social and cultural conscience of the young man adopted by a white family. Leaning into the culture warrior that Kaepernick has become, the series will spotlight the seeds laid in the early 2000s that flourished in the off-the-field battle of today.

Best known for his roles in Netflix’s Baz Luhrmann co-created The Get Down and Todd Haynes’ drama Wonderstruck, Michael was the lead in this year’s Vampires vs the Bronx, which was produced by Lorne Michaels and stars Zoe Saldana, Method Man and Shea Whigham.

Speaking of blood-sucking, the NFL has recently copped to treating Kaepernick badly over his political POV. The league axed the Super Bowl XLVII vet in 2016 for taking a knee that season during the national anthem in protest over police violence and systemic racism. However, for all the current mea culpa on the part of the Roger Goodell-led league and Kaepernick being featured in an NFL Black Lives Matter video this season, no team has offered the now 32-year-old a real tryout or contract.

Now celebrated in the front offices and VIP skyboxes for his political stance on the field four years ago, Kaepernick settled a multimillion-dollar collusion lawsuit with the NFL in February 2019. The terms of that deal have never been made public.

Michael is repped by A3 Artists Agency, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Sloss Eckhouse LawCo.

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