![Arika Mittman and Gabe Dunn](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Arika-Mittman-and-Gabe-Dunn-UTV-development-Split-Publicity-H-2023.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
The life of author and activist Eve Adams, an early chronicler of LGBTQ people in New York City, will be the subject of a TV drama in the works at Universal Television.
Gabe Dunn (Big Mouth) and Arika Lisanne Mittman (La Brea, The Irrational) are developing a drama based on The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, a biography by historian Jonathan Ned Katz. Dunn will write the script and executive produce with Mittman and Matt Sadeghian; Katz is a consulting producer.
An immigrant from Poland, Adams (born Chawa Zloczewer) founded a literary salon and tearoom in Greenwich Village in the mid-1920s. The tearoom, known as Eve’s Hangout, was the first openly lesbian spot in the city. Adams also published the book Lesbian Love, a series of vignettes about women she had known and what Katz believes to be the first use of the word lesbian in the title of an American published work. In 1927, Adams was deported to Poland for her radical activism and her homosexuality; she eventually settled in Paris, where, during the Nazi occupation, she was sent to Auschwitz.
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“As a queer and trans writer and filmmaker, I am honored to bring the increasingly relevant, unsung story of gender-bending icon Eve Adams to the forefront,” Dunn said in a statement. “Historian Jonathan Ned Katz’s thrilling biography tells the story of the coolest, bravest, and most complex woman you’ve probably never heard of. It’s so exciting to get to work on this story with Arika Mittman, one of the queer community’s biggest names in TV, and to create a show that is inspiring to anyone fighting today for a better future for all.”
The potential series will focus on Adams’ opening of America’s first lesbian bar, and her friends, a chosen family of activists and outsiders surviving in times of political upheaval and life-or-death danger.
Dunn has written for Netflix’s Big Mouth and co-wrote (with Allison Raskin) the best-selling 2017 novel I Hate Everyone But You. Dunn also hosts the podcasts Bad With Money and Just Between Friends, the latter with Raskin.
Mittman, who has an overall deal with Universal TV, created NBC’s forthcoming drama The Irrational, starring Jesse L. Martin. Her credits also include Timeless, Dexter and Elementary.
Dunn is repped by Verve, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Breechen Feldman. Mittman is repped by Verve, The Feldman Co. and Yorn Levine, and author Katz is with Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
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