Brandon Claybon plays a gay congressman in new daytime soap opera with eyes on the White House

Brandon Claybon attends the 56th NAACP Image Awards Creative Honors at The Novo on February 21, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Paras Griffin/WireImage.

Daytime television is getting a makeover, possibly bigger than even the Fab Five could come up with: a new network soap opera. It’s been a minute since the most recent soap, Passions, premiered in 1999. Make room for Beyond the Gates, the first Black-led soap opera in history.

NBC’s short-lived Generations (1989) featured a Black family, but Beyond the Gates puts the Black experience front and center. “We just wanted something that felt fresh, new, different, really glossy, fun and really epic,” Sheila Ducksworth, president of CBS Studios/NAACP Venture an executive producer, told the Associated Press.

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