After Shadow & Act’s report of the news that Yara Shahidi’s black-ish spinoff had a new title, Freeform has now addressed the name change and has solidified a few cast members.

As we expected, Trevor Jackson will reprise his role as a friend of Zoey’s and a socially-conscious sophomore from the pilot. However, Mallory Sparks will not reprise her role as Zoey’s new friend Miriam, a freshman with a no holds barred attitude. The role has been recast from the backdoor pilot, and will now be played by Emily Arlook.

 

BLACK-ISH - "Liberal Arts" - Dre tearfully drops Zoey off to college for her two-day orientation, and she hits it off with fellow incoming freshman Miriam after they ditch the campus tour. They are smitten upon meeting Aaron, who is running the Black Student Union booth at the club fair. When Zoey finds out that Dre never turned in her housing application, she pays a visit to President Schock and Dean Parker to plead for mercy, on "black-ish," WEDNESDAY, MAY 3 (9:30-10:00 p.m. EDT), on The ABC Television Network. (ABC/Ron Tom) DEON COLE, TREVOR JACKSON
Photo: ABC/Ron Tom

Chris Parnell will also reprise his role from the backdoor pilot as the dean of Southern California University.

grown-ish reflects what we’ll be dealing with in the show – that in between place where you’re not quite an adult but facing grown world problems for the first time,” said creator and executive producer Kenya Barris. “Where black-ish examines what it means to be black, grown-ish is an examination of what it is and what it means to be grown.”

As we reported Tuesday, both Shahidi and black-ish‘s Deon Cole will concurrently appear on both shows, as well as Anthony Anderson (Dre) and Tracee Ellis Ross (Bow). Cole’s character Charlie will be an ad-exec by day on black-ish and a college professor on grown-ish. 

The first season of the show has 13 episodes and will be executive produced by Barris with  Anthony Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Sugland and Brian Dobbins.