Peacock Bets a Bel-Air Spinoff on Coco Jones

Peacock is developing Hilary, a Bel-Air spinoff that would send Coco Jones to New York as a chef, Deadline reported on August 25. If the streamer picks it up, the four-season drama would become Peacock’s first scripted original series to get a spinoff.

The wager is a title role for Jones, not another year inside the Banks house. Tracy Oliver, who is new to the franchise, is writing it for Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios and Universal Television.

Peacock Puts Its First Spinoff on Coco Jones

Nellie Andreeva’s Deadline exclusive framed the project as a “potential” series, not a pickup. Variety later confirmed the same hedge: Bel-Air becomes Peacock’s first scripted original to spin off only if Hilary moves forward.

EXCLUSIVE: Peacock is developing ‘Hilary,’ a ‘Bel-Air’ offshoot centered on Will Smith’s (Jabari Banks) cousin, played on the mothership by Coco Jones who is set to headline the potential new series as the title star

More details here: https://t.co/SITfC7OudR pic.twitter.com/VazOPGeYoV

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) August 25, 2026

The logline is blunt. After a surprise job offer from celebrity chef Yvonne Durand, Hilary Banks “impulsively moves to New York determined to prove herself beyond her Bel-Air connections,” then finds that “success, friendship and love in the city come with a cost she never anticipated.”

THE PEACOCK BET

• The milestone: Hilary would be the first spinoff of a Peacock scripted original if it is ordered.
• The mothership: Bel-Air ran four seasons, from February 13, 2022 to a December 8, 2025 finale.
• The audience: The New York Times called it the most-streamed show in Peacock’s small original slate; the company declined to publish numbers.
• The hardware: The Times also counted 14 NAACP Image Award nominations and three wins.

Morgan Cooper’s $25,000 fan trailer, also reported by the Times, is what pulled Will Smith into a grim new take on his own sitcom. Westbrook and Universal Television made that show. They would make this one too. Jones and Oliver would executive produce with Smith, Terence Carter, David Boorstein, and Miguel Melendez of Westbrook, plus Benny Medina, Andy Borowitz, Susan Borowitz, Cooper, the Jeff Pollack trust, and the Quincy Jones estate.

A title-role drama built around a young Black woman is scarce enough that the development itself is the news. The complaint that follows is structural: this is a spinoff of a reboot, two steps from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and a development deal is not a series.

The Week After the Wedding, a Title Role

Jones married Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell on August 1. The Hilary notice landed 24 days later, while coverage of the honeymoon was still circulating. She is 28. The timing is a stack, not a lull.

COCO JONES IN 2026

• The album: Why Not More?, her debut studio set, is nominated for Best R&B Album at the 68th Grammy Awards.
• The win: She already has Best R&B Solo Performance for ICU from the 66th Grammys, part of one win and eight nominations on the Recording Academy’s own tally.
• The film pile: Deadline lists Malcolm D. Lee’s thriller Strung as recent work and the rom-com That’s Her as already shot.
• The new job: Hilary would be the first series with her name on the title after four seasons as a Banks regular.

That calendar already changed Bel-Air. Showrunner Carla Banks-Waddles told TVLine that Jones was “just busy” in the final season, a Grammy-winning musical artist whose hours had to be fitted around the scripts. Hilary was written to Costa Rica so the production could “fit her in where we could get her.” Banks-Waddles said Jones stayed committed. She also said the show had to work around the music.

A lead role does not shrink that problem. It puts Jones’s tour dates, awards cycle, and a new marriage on the same call sheet as a New York drama. Peacock is betting the pull of her name is worth the scheduling fight that already thinned her last season.

Honeybee’s Was Supposed to Be the Ending

Bel-Air did not leave Hilary in transit. Cosmopolitan’s finale recap and a later Forbes interview with Banks-Waddles both describe the same close: she comes back from Costa Rica and opens Honeybee’s, a cafe of healing food, in California. Jazz, played by Jordan L. Jones, opens a vinyl shop across the street.

The pain that got her there was a husband’s death. Season 3 honeymoon cliffhanger pages on Peacock’s own guide still describe Hilary finding Lamarcus Alton, played by Justin Cornwell, unconscious in their honeymoon bed. Season 4 sent the widow to a Costa Rica wellness center tied to his foundation. Jones was billed as recurring, not a full regular, for large stretches of that year.

I’m excited for people to see this wiser side of Hilary, and her new aesthetic. She’s learning what she wants to contribute to society. Even though she lost someone of a great magnitude, she kind of finds her purpose.

Coco Jones, speaking to TVLine during Bel-Air’s final season

Purpose, in that telling, was the cafe. Deadline now says the spinoff “gives Hilary a fresh start and a different path than the one charted in the series finale.” The new path is the impulsive New York job. Honeybee’s becomes a closed loop the streamer is willing to cut.

CBR noted that Jordan L. Jones has not been confirmed for the New York show. Nothing in Deadline’s piece names Jazz, Lamarcus, or a legal reason Hilary would abandon a restaurant she just opened. The rewrite is the pitch.

Who Is Writing the Hilary Spinoff?

Tracy Oliver is writing Hilary and executive producing it, and Deadline is careful to say she is new to this franchise. The 40-word version of her resume is Girls Trip, the Prime Video series Harlem, BET+’s First Wives Club, plus Little, The Sun Is Also a Star, and The Blackening. Carla Banks-Waddles, who ran Bel-Air from season 2 through the finale, is not named on the new project in that report.

Oliver became, in Deadline and Variety’s matching line, the first Black woman to write a film that grossed more than $100 million. Box Office Mojo’s ledger on Girls Trip puts the 2017 comedy at $115.2 million domestic and a $140.6 million worldwide total against a $19 million budget, released by Universal Pictures, which sits in the same corporate family as Peacock.

She is not sitting idle for a spec. Deadline’s same story has her on The Wedding Date for Netflix, Girls Trip 2, The Blackening 2, the holiday film Deck the Y’alls, plus Paper Gods at Netflix and Not a Happy Family at Starz. Girls Trip 2 has been “officially happening” in her own 2023 comments and still has not happened. Peacock is asking a busy film writer, not the Bel-Air room, to invent a New York kitchen that can stand without Will, Carlton, or the mansion.

Original Hilary Took the Talk Show East

Karyn Parsons’s Hilary left first. In the 1996 series finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, her talk show moved to New York and Ashley went with her. Uncle Phil and Vivian followed. Will stayed in California. No Hilary series was shot then, or in the 30 years after.

The new show copies that geography and drops the talk show. Jones’s Hilary started on Bel-Air as an influencer and pivoted into food. The spinoff keeps the chef and borrows the city from the sitcom’s last night.

Yvonne Durand does not appear in the public record as a real chef. She reads as a fictional boss, a door out of Beverly Hills. Deadline’s own comparison is that the premise is “more in line” with the sitcom ending than with Bel-Air’s. The streamer is not hiding the overwrite. It is using it.

Jones came up on Disney’s So Random and the 2012 film Let It Shine, then spent four seasons turning Hilary from a content face into a cook. The New York job asks that cook to prove she can work without the Banks last name in the room. That is the sentence the logline keeps repeating.

Why a Series Order Is Still the Hard Part

Hilary is in development, not ordered to series, and Peacock has not set a writers-room date, a guest list, or a premiere window. Jones is attached to star and produce, Oliver is attached to write, and Westbrook is attached to make it, which is a full package on paper and still one greenlight short of a show. The practical risk is the same one Bel-Air already had to write around: Jones’s music calendar.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The status: Peacock is developing the series with Westbrook Studios and Universal Television.
• The leads: Jones headlines and executive produces; Oliver writes and executive produces.
• The premise: A job from chef Yvonne Durand pulls Hilary to New York.
• The studios: The same companies that made Bel-Air would make the spinoff.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A pickup: No series order, episode count, or start date has been announced.
• The ensemble: No New York regulars are named, and Jazz’s return is not confirmed.
• The continuity: There is no public explanation for leaving Honeybee’s behind.
• Jones’s time: How a tour, an awards cycle, and a title role share one calendar is unsaid.

Peacock launched in July 2020 and used Bel-Air, which LAist later called its longest-running original, to prove it could hold a weekly drama. Spinning that drama is a different test. Limited series such as All Her Fault have since posted bigger launch hours, which means Hilary would arrive as a brand extension, not as the streamer’s only calling card.

Westbrook Stays Attached After the Finale

Jabari Banks’s Will got into Penn and left Los Angeles in the finale. Carlton headed toward Morehouse. Ashley’s school choice pulled Philip and Vivian out of the mansion. The Banks house is empty on purpose. A Hilary series is how Westbrook keeps the name in production without putting a grown Will back in high school.

Smith stays as a producer. Cooper stays too. Oliver still has to build a kitchen, a boss named Yvonne Durand, and a New York circle that can hold a season without the old living room. Jones has to hold the center of that circle while ICU, Why Not More?, and a wedding recap visualizer for Love Me Through are still the other job.

Deadline’s report does not include a series order, a room date, or a premiere window. Jones remains attached as star and executive producer, and Westbrook remains the studio that would have to make New York look like a life after Honeybee’s.