Who says there’s no drama in a smoked fish? Certainly not Joel Russ, a Jewish immigrant from Strzyzow, Poland, who peddled herring from a pushcart on the Lower East Side between the years 1904 and 1907. And certainly not Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, fourth-generation co-owners of Russ & Daughters, the lucrative business that grew out of those humble origins. The pair has contracted with Time Magazine’s entertainment studio to do a family drama centering on the century-old Jewish appetizing store.
Deadline quotes Time Studios’ VP of Film & TV, Kaveh Veyssi, as explaining that the project was initially conceived as a story about immigrants pursuing a new life in America. But the multi-generational aspect of businesses like Russ’s enable the storyteller to focus on the trials and tribulations of successive family members “set against the backdrop of dozens of critical moments in our society.”
