Catch Up With the ‘Girlfriends,’ 15 Years After the Series Finale

A decade and a half ago, on February 11, 2008, the UPN-turned-CW series Girlfriends left the airwaves without a proper goodbye. Following the writers strike that winter, The CW chose only to resume production on the series it was renewing, spurning Girlfriends fans who had followed the sitcom for eight seasons and 172 episodes.

It was an abrupt end for a TV show that broke new ground for onscreen representation, coming at a time when so many of the hit comedies of the small screen featured all-white casts.

Girlfriends sprang from the mind of creator Mara Brock Akil, who pitched a show about friendship centering a Black female perspective, as she told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “I was examining something that I sold in the room, which was that I was going to tell all the secrets of Black women, but my real secret was that we were human. And we had all these layers to us that deserve stories and deserve a place to be told,” Akil said.

“It was really special to see a story about four Black women, all whose stories were about mostly each other and not about the man they were pursuing,” star Tracee Ellis Ross told USA Today in 2020. “And at the core of the show was about the relationship between these women, and how to be a friend.”

Costar Golden Brooks added: “It seemed very novel. In actuality, we as women of color, we do these things every day. We have varied emotions. … And I just think that it was beautiful to see Mara sort of unfold and introduce that to pop culture, because you hadn’t seen it.”

Here’s what the Girlfriends cast has gotten up to in the 15 years since the show ended…