When the CBC announced its newest primetime addition Diggstown would feature the first black Canadian female lead in a Canadian original drama on network television, the news made waves. Now, the producers of the Nova Scotia-set drama have found the lead to take on the historic role: Toronto-born actress Vinessa Antoine (pictured).

Antoine, who’s had starring roles in Being Erica and more recently played Jordan Ashford on General Hospital, takes on the role of Marcie Diggs in Diggstown. Marcie is a star corporate lawyer who lands at a legal aid office in Dartmouth following a family tragedy and is determined to find justice for her diverse clients.

Antoine will not be alone in her starring role as a woman of colour on a Canadian drama – British actor Hannah John-Kamen has been starring on Space hit Killjoys since 2015. However Antoine is both a Black Canadian woman, and will be playing one.

Produced by Circle Blue Entertainment, Freddie Films and DHX Media, the hour-long drama is created by showrunner and exec producer Floyd Kane, who says Marcie is based on the “plethora of diverse black females” he’s grown up with over the years, but has rarely seen on screen.

“A lot of shows, the character will be written non-specific, and the casting agent would say, ‘It would be really great if we cast this as black, or a person of colour.’ For us, and I think this may be why it feels different, this character was conceived, top to bottom, as a Black Canadian woman,” he told Playback Daily at CBC’s Upfront event in May.

“It’s about giving audience an access into a fresh world that they hardly know. Whether it’s a black world, Asian, brown, it’s a new world that you don’t see that often. There’s new stories there to be told and that’s where Marcie takes us,” added executive producer Amos Adetuyi.

When asked why it’s taken so long for a Marcie to make it to Canadian screens, the producers simply responded, “market.”

In recent years, Adetuyi said he couldn’t get meetings at international markets to discuss series with black characters. Fast forward a dozen years, following the success of series like Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, which both feature black female leads, and Adetuyi says international distributors are now finally calling him.

“It was really gratifying to be on these phone calls and have people talk about how much they like the show and not even mention the fact that [the lead] is black,” said Kane.

Diggstown is set to go into production in the Halifax area in August. It will premiere on CBC in late winter.