“Call me now for your free reading,” is a line that everyone remembers from the late-night Miss Cleo commercials. However, what’s less known is that Miss Cleo, prior to her arrest, raked in an estimated $500 million from callers looking for her sage advice. Well, stories like these often make good television, and the award-winning actress Sanaa Lathan is set to portray the legendary ’90s television psychic Miss Cleo in an upcoming dark comedy-drama series, Miss Cleo.
The upcoming series is currently in pre-production at Legendary Entertainment, with the Succession star serving as both the executive producer and the lead star of the upcoming series. The Miss Cleo drama series is inspired by the true story of its Youree Dell Harris, the eponymous Miss Cleo. It explores the rise of the ’90s psychic legend and her subsequent legal battles, which involved various governing agencies and bodies, as well as an eyewatering sum of $500 million. From what we know so far, the series will explore her journey from a playwright to a faux psychic, with special emphasis on the court case.
The series is inevitably going to explore Miss Cleo’s lasting impact on popular culture, and with Sanaa Lathan at the helm — along with former Sony Pictures Television head of drama Sharon Hill as an executive co-producer — Miss Cleo is bound to shed new light on the rather intriguing story of one of the biggest ’90s psychic sensations. As of right now, the series is still in very early development, and it’s being offered to different broadcasters and streamers.
For those who aren’t in the know, Miss Cleo was an American TV personality and a spokesperson for a psychic pay-per-minute telemarketing service called Psychic Readers Network. However, before she appeared in a series of commercials that made her famous, Harris wrote several plays under the pseudonym Ree Perris, including For Women Only, Summer Rhapsody, and Supper Club Café. The latter wasn’t a success, and Harris left Seattle with a trail of debts and broken promises.
All of this took place in 1997, and Harris relocated to Florida, where she met with Peter Stolz and Steven Feder, the founders of Psychic Readers Network, who took her in as a call-taker and gave her a reader number of 16153. Youree was using the Jamaican accent when she started working as a card-reading psychic for PRN (a telemarketing business), which added a layer of mysticism to the character of Miss Cleo she would later portray.
As Miss Cleo, she appeared in a 2000 television infomercial, claiming to be a shaman from Jamaica. The company’s website even claimed that Miss Cleo was born and raised in Trelawny, Jamaica — this wasn’t true at all; Harris was born in Los Angeles and raised in a Catholic Afro-Caribbean family. However, that didn’t stop the company from using the title Miss Cleo to send unsolicited emails (spam) to people.
Of course, these were scams, and in 2002, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Peter Stolz and Steven Feder with deceptive advertising and billing. Miss Cleo wasn’t indicted, but the lawsuit exposed her private information, as well as the fact that she was Los Angeles-born to American citizens. She was charged under a legal provision that allowed the spokespeople to be held accountable by the state of Florida, but those charges were later dropped.
Unfortunately, Harris died in 2016 from colorectal cancer, which metastasized. In 2022, HBO Max released a feature documentary about her life titled Call Me Miss Cleo. And now, Sanaa Lathan is assuming the role of Miss Cleo in the upcoming series. The Alien v Predator actress recently appeared in the Young. Wild. Free an independent film alongside Mike Epps, Sierra Capri, and Algee Smith, which centered on the rollercoaster life of a Compton teen.
Sanaa Lathan began her career after appearing in shows like In The House, Moesha, NYPD Blue, and Family Matters. She garnered further fame by starring in Wesley Snipe’s Blade, followed by The Best Man, the legendary Love & Basketball, Brown Sugar, and Disappearing Acts. She also appeared in the previously mentioned Alien vs. Predator, after which she landed a leading role in The Family That Preys. Her work on Succession also landed her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
Apart from live-action and theater work, Sanaa Lathan is also known for her voice acting, having voiced Catwoman on Harley Quinn and Donna Tubbs in The Cleveland Show. Interestingly, she’s set to portray Youree Dell Harris, who was also famous among gamers for voicing Auntie Poulet in the legendary Grand Theft Auto: Vice City video game.
Unfortunately, we can’t share any more details about the upcoming series, but with Lathan’s previous performances in movies and television, we’re expecting a performance that’s nothing short of exceptional.