‘Beyond the Gates’ brings TV Black excellence to Atlanta soundstages

Inside a soundstage at Assembly Studios in Doraville, the cameras keep rolling on what its executive producer calls a six-year bet that daytime soap operas still have an audience, and a future.

“Beyond the Gates,” the CBS daytime drama centered on the wealthy, multigenerational Black Dupree family, is shooting seven episodes a week on the studio lot just outside Atlanta, the first network soap opera to be produced in the city. The show, born from a 2020 partnership between CBS Studios and the NAACP, has grown from a pitch made in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic into broadcast television’s only new daytime drama of the 21st century.

“Soap operas were going the way of the dinosaurs,” said Sheila Ducksworth, the show’s executive producer and president of the CBS Studios/NAACP Venture, during a set visit. She described the Duprees as “the Black Kennedys, so to speak,” a multigenerational family whose wealth and standing anchor the series’ fictional gated community outside Washington, D.C.

Ducksworth first pitched the series in the summer of 2020, the same year CBS and the NAACP announced their content partnership in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. It took roughly four years for the show to reach the air. Showrunner Michele Val Jean spent months developing the show’s bible before CBS picked up the series in the spring of 2024, then assembled a writing team that has run as large as 16 people to break stories for the Dupree family and their neighbors.

“Beyond the Gates” premiered on CBS Feb. 24, 2025, becoming the first new daytime soap opera to debut on a major broadcast network since “Passions” ended its run in 1999, and the first to feature a predominantly Black cast since NBC’s “Generations” left the air in 1991. It is also, according to CBS, the first hour-long soap opera with a predominantly Black cast in the history of daytime television. Only four soap operas remain on broadcast TV, three of them on CBS, which Ducksworth said makes the network the only one left with a dedicated soap opera block.

More than 400 episodes have been produced, and more than 300 have aired, according to the show. CBS renewed the series this year for two additional seasons, extending it through the 2027 to 2028 broadcast season.

“We will run for 100-plus years,” Ducksworth said.

The show has drawn comparisons to other passionate fan communities. “Soap opera fans are like Marvel Comics fans; they are so invested in their stories,” Ducksworth said. “There is a fandom for soap opera watchers.” She said the show was built with a broad audience in mind. “The target audience is everybody,” she said.

Choosing Atlanta as the production’s home was not a difficult decision, Ducksworth said. “Atlanta was the first place considered when the production was scouting locations, she said, citing the city’s depth of production talent and crew. She also framed the decision as part of a broader effort to support the local industry after a period of slower studio activity. “I am so pleased to provide the Atlanta economic opportunity,” she said, pointing to the lack of moving sets and inactivity on studio lots that had been more common five to 10 years ago.

At its core, Ducksworth said, the show is about the bonds within the Dupree household. “It’s about family. It’s a family that loves each other,” she said.

This season, “Beyond the Gates” is in the midst of a crossover event with “The Young and the Restless,” bringing approximately six characters from the Genoa City-set soap into the Duprees’ world for a week of episodes. A 36-minute screener of the crossover was made available to the press. New episodes of the show’s second season continue July 24, producers said.

Ducksworth, who is also credited as the first Black woman to serve as a non-writing executive producer of a daytime drama, said the milestone was not lost on her or Val Jean, the show’s creator and head writer. Asked why she believes the series can endure for generations, she returned to the same answer she gave when the show was still just an idea pitched during a pandemic summer.

“Because why not?” she said.

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