A woman’s reputation can take years to build and only seconds to unravel. In Power & Influence, the threat isn’t just colleagues spilling tea. It’s a deepfake, a manufactured version of reality persuasive enough to jeopardize the futures of two Black women who have very different ideas about what it means to hold power. The unfolding drama will reach audiences in episodes short enough to watch between text messages.
Premiering Monday, Oct. 19, exclusively on BOSSIP’s TikTok account, Urban One’s new corporate thriller follows Nia Whitmore, the chief executive of a respected Black-owned advertising agency in Atlanta, and Zuri Reynolds, a young creative strategist whose knowledge of the city may be the company’s lifeline. When AI deepfakes expose scandals and send the agency into turmoil, the women find themselves navigating threats to their reputations, careers, and hard-won influence. Ivory Shields, known for Queen Sugar, plays Nia, while Nappily Ever After actress Tanazia Madan portrays Zuri.
The series is part of Urban One’s entry into original vertical microseries, scripted entertainment built for the way audiences watch on their phones. Its 20 episodes average just 90 seconds apiece, tackling topics like professional ambition, generational friction, digital deception, and the ways Black women are judged when they dare to take up space. In an exclusive conversation with MadameNoire, Shields and Madan discussed the storytelling format, what they recognized in their characters, and why the fictional stakes feel so close to real life.
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A Whole Lot Of Drama In 90 Seconds
The vertical drama asks viewers to reconsider what an episode of television can look like. Rather than settling in for an hour-long installment, audiences can follow a continuing story one bite-sized cliffhanger at a time. For Power & Influence, that means a corporate thriller involving a shifting balance of authority, relationships, and trust will unfold directly in a TikTok feed. The format is new territory for some viewers, but Shields sees it as an extension of the resourcefulness Black entertainers have demonstrated for years.
Reflecting on the growth of vertical storytelling, Shields connected its momentum to a period when creators looked for opportunities beyond traditional Hollywood gatekeepers, including during the writers’ strike. She pointed to comedian and digital creator Kountry Wayne as an example of someone who built an audience through short-form vertical content. In her view, the movement came from creators “taking things into their own hands and creating for themselves.” That independent spirit is now informing how major media companies think about distributing scripted entertainment.
Urban One has announced a second vertical drama, Foul Play, which is in production and centers on a revenge story set in women’s basketball. The company has designed its microseries to extend across its other media platforms after their exclusive TikTok debuts, including television and streaming adaptations. In announcing the slate, iONE Digital Senior Vice President of Content Allison McGevna described a deliberate approach to mobile storytelling. “We are creating stories specifically for the way our audiences watch today,” McGevna said.
Written by Dreux Dougall, directed by Jamal Simmons, and executive produced by Ma’at Zachary, Power & Influence uses the quick pace to explore a world where a single piece of manipulated content can change the direction of several lives. For Shields, the series is also an invitation for girlfriends to gather, compare notes, and debate the characters’ decisions.
Shields encouraged viewers to make the premiere a shared experience, complete with girlfriends, snacks, and a group chat. She described the series as full of “juicy moments” and “made-for-TV moments,” even if those moments now arrive on a much smaller screen.
Black Women And The Right To Take Up Space
At the center of that conversation are Nia and Zuri, two women who enter the story from different professional vantage points. Nia has an agency and reputation to protect. Zuri has ideas, instincts, and something to prove to people who may not recognize her value. Their forced proximity creates tension beyond the deepfake scandal. It also makes room to question who gets to be seen as capable, and how much must a woman accomplish before people stop questioning whether she belongs?
For Shields, Nia’s unapologetic approach to her career was instantly recognizable. “She doesn’t shrink. She goes after what she wants,” the actress said, explaining that Nia’s determination and commitment to her professional life reflected something she valued in herself. The character isn’t presented as someone who needs permission to be in charge, even when her decisions are difficult, or her methods invite criticism. That is refreshing to see–especially in a culture where a Black woman asserting authority may be received very differently from someone else doing the same thing.
Shields believes that many women have internalized expectations that keep them from recognizing their own potential. “But we’ve been programmed to shrink,” she said during the conversation about the grace afforded to ambitious and assertive Black women. The challenge, as she sees it, is learning to move beyond those limitations long enough to discover what is possible when women stop minimizing themselves.
Madan connected with Zuri for another reason: the frustration of having other people decide what she is capable of before she has the opportunity to show them. “People always think I’m younger than I am,” she said, adding that people also underestimate her intelligence. Like her character, Madan understands that being dismissed on sight can become its own obstacle. Yet she also admires Zuri’s willingness to learn, seeing room for the young strategist to grow into a more assertive version of herself.
“I feel like she’s so underestimated,” Madan said of Zuri, who must learn to stand confidently in rooms where her perspective may not be welcomed.
Her character’s journey isn’t merely about getting ahead. It’s also about recognizing that she already brings something valuable to the table, whether or not others are prepared to acknowledge it. As Madan put it while discussing the confidence Zuri still has to develop, “you are who you are. You don’t shrink.”
The actresses’ reflections moved beyond the workplace and into another arena where Black women’s worth is constantly negotiated: beauty. Shields admitted that she spent years resisting the idea of leading with her appearance, intent on being recognized for her intelligence, accomplishments, and credentials. That relationship is changing. Now she is allowing herself to embrace a quality she once worried might overshadow everything else, while recognizing that “aging is a privilege.”
Her perspective complicates the idea that being taken seriously requires a woman to downplay how she looks.
Madan, meanwhile, described nearly the reverse experience. She wants to be recognized for the full range of what she brings to her work, not confined to appearance or similar roles. “I’m tired of playing the pretty characters,” she said as she reflected on her career and the pressure to announce her degrees and business accomplishments as evidence that she is more than her looks. Despite arriving at the question from different directions, both women seem to be learning the same lesson: Neither beauty nor a résumé should have the final word on a person’s value.
Shields said she has had to loosen her attachment to credentials as proof of legitimacy. “I have two degrees, but I don’t need degrees to validate that,” she explained, pointing instead to the knowledge that comes with experience and trusting herself. Madan echoed the sentiment with a reminder that can get lost in a culture of constant achievement: “We’re human beings not human doings.”
For Madan, that realization has also required reevaluating the pressure to remain constantly productive. “Stop trying to always do something. Stop trying to fill that time with something,” she said. Their observations add another layer to Power & Influence, a series in which public perception can determine who gets access, credibility, and a seat at the table, even when that perception has little to do with the truth.
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When AI Can Rewrite Your Story
If the characters are fighting to define themselves in the workplace, the series’ use of deepfakes raises a more unsettling possibility. What happens when someone can put words in your mouth or create an image of you that never existed? For performers, whose faces and likenesses are part of their livelihoods, the question isn’t limited to the screen. Both actresses see potential uses for AI, but neither dismisses the risks of letting technology shape a person’s identity without their consent.
Madan recalled a recent moment on a set when someone told her they had spotted her in a trailer. When the person played it, the woman on-screen looked so strikingly similar to Madan that she briefly wondered if her own image had been digitally recreated.
“Did they AI me?” she remembered asking herself.
There was no indication in her account that AI had actually been used. What stayed with her was the fact that the possibility crossed her mind at all, especially considering how widely photographs and videos circulate online.
“They could’ve gotten my image from anywhere,” Madan said. She finds AI useful for brainstorming, organization, and developing visual ideas, but worries about how dependent people have become on it and what happens when their likenesses can be exploited. That tension between convenience and control is precisely the kind of anxiety Power & Influence brings into its fictional world.
Shields takes a similarly measured approach, saying she chooses to embrace AI when it serves her rather than treat its arrival as something she can stop. Still, she acknowledged that “there is definitely a shadow side to the AI, 1000%.” She expressed frustration with AI-generated commercials and argued that technology cannot fully replace what happens between people. “I don’t feel threatened by it, to be perfectly honest,” she said, before emphasizing the importance of human connection. She also wants the conversation to move beyond individual preferences and toward protections for those whose work relies on their identity.
“I definitely think governance needs to be looked at around AI for sure, 1000%,” Shields said, adding that she hopes film and television will be prioritized in those conversations. In a series about deepfakes disrupting an agency built on reputation and influence, her concern gives the plot a timely edge. The show’s scandal may be heightened for entertainment, but the uncertainty surrounding image ownership, consent, and trust is very much a real-world concern.
Ultimately, the actresses hope audiences look beyond the intrigue to consider how they judge the women at its center. Shields wants Black women to recognize themselves in characters who make difficult decisions and refuse to minimize their ambitions, even when their choices upset others. Madan hopes viewers resist the temptation to define either woman by a first impression, particularly as their choices reveal new sides of them.
“I feel like we don’t do that as Black women,” Madan said of extending grace to one another. She urged audiences to “give each other grace, give ourselves grace” and recognize that Black women are dynamic individuals who are constantly evolving. Rather than immediately labeling Nia as aggressive or dismissing Zuri because of her background, she wants viewers to leave room for both women to grow, make mistakes, and become something different from who they were at the beginning.
It is an especially fitting message for a show in which one moment of video can threaten to become someone’s entire story. Nia and Zuri may arrive with secrets, complicated motivations, and plenty of reasons to mistrust one another, but neither can be reduced to the version of herself that others choose to circulate.
Catch Power & Influence every Monday on BOSSIP’s TikTok, beginning Oct. 19.
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