Kevin Arkadie, ‘New York Undercover’ Co-Creator, Dies at 68
The accomplished screenwriter also worked on ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘The Temptations.’
Writer & Executive Producer Kevin Arkadie attends the Premiere Of TV One's "Media" at Pacific Design Center on February 13, 2017 in West Hollywood, California.
Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images.
Kevin Arkadie, a screenwriter who helped create the beloved ’90s urban police drama New York Undercover, has died at 68. According to his cousin, producer L. True Green, Arkadie died at a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday. He was 68. The news was also confirmed by Wolf Entertainment, the entertainment company led by Dick Wolf, who co-created New York Undercover with Arkadie.
The New York Times reports that the cause of his death was pneumonia that developed after a kidney transplant.
“At a time when television rarely reflected the lived experiences of many communities, Kevin helped create a series that embraced contemporary culture and told stories that felt real,” Wolf Entertainment said in a statement.
Arkadie was a champion of representation for actors of color in the television industry. He’d grown up in Washington, D.C. and Dallas, before he moved to New York City. His initial goal was to pursue an acting career, but he was frustrated by the stereotypical roles being offered. So he began taking writing classes at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and collaborating with other playwrights.
Arkadie was most known for having co-created New York Undercover, which ran for 89 episodes on Fox for four seasons beginning in 1994. The show follows two undercover detectives in New York City, one Black and one Latino, and was one of the first prime-time police dramas to feature two actors of color as the leads.
Arkadie also worked on other popular police dramas, including as a supervising producer on NYPD Blue and as an executive producer of The Shield. He contributed to popular projects such as I’ll Fly Away and The Temptations mini-series. He also created the mini-series Miracle’s Boys, an adaptation of Jacqueline Woodson’s 2000 novel about three orphaned brothers in Harlem that aired in 2005. It included two episodes directed by Spike Lee.
“We all want to see a show that depicts young Black men in new ways,” Mr. Arkadie said in an interview with The New York Times. “That experience has been pigeonholed, misrepresented.”
