‘A Different World’ EP & Liverpool Chairman Tom Werner Interview

Tom Werner has been involved in a lot of hit television shows, from working on Mork & Mindy and Taxi when he was at ABC to producing series including The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock From The Sun and That ‘70s Show at Carsey-Werner.

When he moved into sports ownership as part of the group that acquired the Boston Red Sox in 2001 and soccer club Liverpool FC in 2010, he wanted to help these teams find their form on the field and bring them back to greatness.

Liverpool FC’s greatness started with manager Bill Shankly in the 1960s and, in a wide-ranging interview, Chairman Werner revealed that he has tapped Jude Law to play the legendary soccer coach in a new series.

This was the same goal with Netflix’s recent reboot of A Different World, a series that he originally produced for NBC starting in 1987, that was handed a second season renewal by the streamer just over a week after its September premiere.

“When Fenway Sports Group got involved with the Red Sox, they had not won a World Series in 84 years, and we felt, in a world in which we were good stewards, that we could restore the legacy and the luster of the Red Sox,” Werner told Deadline. “As it relates to A Different World, I’m not really interested in Emmys or economics right now, I am interested in impact.”

Werner and Debbie Allen, who directed over half of the episodes of A Different World’s original 144 episodes, had been working on bringing the show back for some time before pairing with showrunner Felicia Pride, who has written on series including Queen Sugar, Grey’s Anatomy and Bel-Air.

“The reason that we wanted to bring it back really had to do with the fact that I felt like at its best it would have impact,” he said.

When A Different World first premiered, admissions to historic black colleges and universities (HCBUs) rose around 25%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Over the last couple of years, HCBUs are also seeing a rise in enrollments with Howard University receiving record applications in 2024.

“It was my hope that this reboot, done well, would not just talk about relevant social issues, which it does… but that there was something where we could have similar impact,” he added. “This is very different than if you had said, ‘Why don’t we do a show about freshmen at Purdue?’”

Netflix’s A Different World is centered around Deborah, played by Maleah Joi Moon, the free-spirited, well-intentioned yet rebellious youngest child of the original show’s Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy), during her freshman year at Hillman College alongside a whole new generation of Hillman’s best and brightest.

The ten-part series features topics such as a situation with ICE, sexual assault and college funding issues, all current issues that colleges and college students now have to deal with. “I’m very proud of the impact and I’m delighted that it seems the audience has responded,” Werner added.

The show debuted at number four in Netflix’s top ten chart with 4.2M views in its opening few days and reached number one in 12 countries.

Werner, who has been Chairman of Liverpool FC since 2010, is also hoping a project about his favorite football club can have a similar impact.

The club is working with Beef studio A24, Drive To Survive producer Box to Box Films and Adolescence writer Jack Thorne on a series initially centered around legendary manager Bill Shankly, who helped turn the club into a global powerhouse.

He believes the series could become like The Crown. “It’s a story about family and relationships through the lens of a football club,” he said. “My feeling is, if you do nothing more in that first episode than show 50,000 people singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, I defy anyone who won’t be moved by that one scene,” he added.

Werner also revealed that Black Rabbit star Jude Law was attached to star as Shankly.

Elsewhere, he is also working with Lionsgate on a television project that he is financing. “I always figured out when we sold The Cosby Show, the money was secondary. What was important was that we were actually telling stories that hopefully resonated, and I still think I’m doing that. Sometimes, I’m putting my own capital into it. We’re going to finance it and then we’ll sell it afterwards and have a distributor. It’s a way of getting stories to the audience that you know otherwise might not have been told,” he added.

In recent years, Werner has also gotten heavily involved in theater. He produced the Sarah Snook-led solo adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted and directed by Kip Williams, which saw the Succession star win a Tony Award and the Laurence Olivier Award. He also produced a stage adaptation of 1952 western High Noon, starring Billy Crudup as Marshal Will Kane, which premiered earlier this year at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre.

The High Noon adaptation was written by Eric Roth, who wrote the screenplays for films including Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich and Dune. Roth and Werner, along with Rob Ashford, the choreographer of Frozen, are now working on a musical event featuring pop group Imagine Dragons in Las Vegas.

“Eric had written this script, which was a film script for Netflix. This project has morphed into something that is a musical/concert performance piece. It’s exciting because it’s going to be more than a than a concert because it’s a terrific love story between two people who fall in love in college and it follows their journey,” he said.

Werner also has a one-man theatrical event based on Rodney Dangerfield’s life that he is developing with Joan Dangerfield for Broadway or off Broadway with Danny Goldstein

On the television side, Werner said that while he has no interest in selling Carsey-Werner’s library, which one would imagine is very valuable in today’s IP-obsessed landscape, he has received calls about a reboot of 3rd Rock From The Sun. “That was one of my favorite shows because working with John Lithgow was just a dream,” he said. “I’m calling [a potential reboot] 4^th Rock.”

“I’m a storyteller, and I love telling and reading and being involved with good stories,” Werner concluded.