After more than three years in development, Peacock has given a straight-to-series order to Before I Let Go, based on Kennedy Ryan’s bestselling novel of the same name. Ryan and Malcolm D. Lee co-created the series and co-wrote the pilot.
Attica Locke and Tembi Locke will serve as showrunners and writers on the series.
Executive producers include John Legend and Mike Jackson of Get Lifted Film Co., Debra Martin Chase of Martin Chase Productions, and Dominique Telson of Lee’s Blackmaled Productions. Universal Global Television and Universal Television are producing.
What Is Before I Let Go About?
The premise of Before I Let Go hits differently than the standard romance setup because Yasmen and Josiah aren’t falling in love for the first time. They are trying to figure out what to do with a love that never stopped, even after everything else did.
The official description from Peacock lays out the central emotional tension:
Their love was supposed to last forever, but when life dealt Yasmen and Josiah Wade back-to-back devastating blows, they realized love can’t solve everything. The life they created fell apart and what followed is a divorce and shared custody setup. Now, Yasmen is finally starting to find joy, but proximity to Josiah keeps the embers hot despite reopening old wounds. They are beginning to wonder if they’re truly ready to let go of everything they once had. Is it too late to find forever? Or could the second time around be even better?
The emotional complexity here is not manufactured for drama. It is the specific, unglamorous difficulty of two people who loved each other completely, lost each other anyway, and aren’t sure whether they should try again or finally let it be finished.
Ryan’s approach to romance has always been grounded in real emotional stakes. Her books deal with grief, loss, domestic violence, chronic illness, and parenting. While the themes are heavy, it also means that the happy endings feel earned in ways that lighter fare cannot match.
Before I Let Go is part of the Skyland series, which also includes This Could Be Us (following Yasmen’s best friend Soledad) and Can’t Get Enough. All three interconnected stories are now potentially in play as Peacock develops the series with the full Skyland universe in mind.
The Dream Team Bringing It to Screen
Every person attached to this series deserves a moment, because this is a genuinely extraordinary gathering of creative talent.
Malcolm D. Lee is the director behind The Best Man franchise, Girls Trip, and Space Jam: A New Legacy. He’s a filmmaker with a particular gift for ensemble stories about Black friendship, love, and family that feel both deeply specific and broadly universal.
His statement about the project captures why this partnership felt right from the very beginning:
“From the time I read Kennedy Ryan’s ‘Skyland’ series, I was fully engaged in the lives of these characters and invested in their outcomes. Adapting the pilot with her has been an absolute treasure to experience and we plan on bringing all the feels to her fans and her new TV family. To be able to pass the baton to Attica and Tembi Locke is an absolute dream for this powerhouse team. Can’t wait to get started.”
Attica and Tembi Locke—the sibling creative team behind From Scratch, the Netflix limited series about love, family, and loss that generated one of the most emotional viewing experiences of 2022—are the showrunner choice that makes this feel like it was made specifically to break hearts in the best possible way.
Their statement says everything about why they are right for this material:
“We could not be more thrilled to bring Kennedy Ryan’s ‘Skyland’ series to life. We love and feel uniquely suited to bring books about love, family and healing to screen. To do the work with the incredible team on ‘Before I Let Go’ is a dream.”
John Legend and Mike Jackson’s Get Lifted Film Co. round out the producing team. Their statement about the project’s emotional ambition is the one that should make every Kennedy Ryan reader feel reassured:
“Kennedy has created a deeply moving, honest and beautifully layered story about love, loss, family and the possibility of finding your way back to one another. We’re incredibly proud of the powerful script Kennedy and Malcolm D. Lee have written, and we’re thrilled to have Attica and Tembi Locke guiding the series as showrunners. Their extraordinary storytelling, emotional intelligence and deep understanding of these characters make them the perfect creative partners to bring this world to life.”
Who Is Kennedy Ryan?
Kennedy Ryan is not just one of the most beloved romance novelists working today. She studied journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been self-publishing since the mid-2010s, building a loyal readership long before traditional publishers came calling.
In 2019, she made history as the first Black author to win the RITA Award—the highest honor in romance publishing—for her novel Long Shot. In 2022, she made history again, winning the Audie Award for audiobook excellence in the Romance category for Reel, becoming the first Black author to do so. In 2025, she received another Audie Award for Best Romance Audiobook for This Could Be Us, the second book in the Skyland series.
Her books have been featured in NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Ebony, TIME, Glamour, and Cosmo. And beyond writing, she is the co-founder of LiFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction that has raised over $500,000 for autism awareness. It’s a cause deeply personal to her as the mother of an extraordinary son, as she often describes him.
The Question Only Yasmen and Josiah Can Answer
As of writing, no premiere date or cast has been announced.
For now, this is actually a gift because it means the version of Yasmen and Josiah Wade that lives in Kennedy Ryan’s prose is still entirely your own.
The question of whether Yasmen and Josiah can find their way back to each other is not a given in the way that most romance setups are. It feels genuinely uncertain, because Ryan respects both of them enough to let it be hard.
When Peacock eventually announces who is playing them, the internet will have enormous feelings about it. Until then, read the book. Let these two people exist in your imagination before the screen stakes its claim on them.
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