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CUFFE: TAXED
"Smart, sassy, and probably closer to the real Paul Cuffe than any straight biography/history can ever be."
— Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award–winning author of In the Heart of the Sea
In 1778, with Nantucket cut off by a British blockade and running desperately short of food, nineteen-year-old Paul Cuffe and his brother-in-law Michael Wainer take to the water with a load of much-needed provisions.
The dangerous run forces Paul to choose between protecting his own interests and helping the people of Nantucket.
Based on a true story, CUFFE: TAXED introduces audiences to the young Paul Cuffe, a Black and Wampanoag mariner who would become one of the richest and most influential Black men in America, a politically powerful activist, and the first Black man known to meet with a sitting U.S. president. Yet despite the extraordinary reach of his life and work, Cuffe remains largely absent from the American historical canon.
What's Next?
CUFFE: TAXED is the first chapter of a much larger story.
Feature Film
The feature follows Paul Cuffe across the extraordinary arc of his life, from a young mariner challenging taxation without representation to one of the richest and most influential Black men in America. His journey spans the Revolutionary era, the growth of his maritime empire, his political activism, his work in Sierra Leone, and his historic meeting with President James Madison.
Television Pilot
The television series expands the world around Cuffe, exploring not only Paul’s life but the remarkable family, community, and historical figures who surrounded him. The pilot introduces that larger world and lays the foundation for a series about ambition, freedom, family, race, commerce, and power in the early United States.
Both projects are currently in development.