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And Im a white showrunner telling a story about race.
I had hours and hours and hours of recordings to work from, but there were some gaps.
In the last act or two of the finale, there are several significant conversations that take place.
I want to start with the conversation between Doc and LeVar Burton.
Are they friends in real life?No.
He was on the cusp of separation/divorce from his wife.
When I asked Doc whom he was keeping counsel with at the time, he said nobody.
We had all these lists and we were trying to work through different ideas.
Laurence was like, Yeah, I know him but I dont think hes going to do it.
The kinds of things were talking about in the show are really not part of his public persona.
But we do get together in the sauna pretty frequently where we talk about race.
I was like, Thats been in the scripts for months why has his name never come up?
Its just this coincidence that Laurence was having similar conversations with LeVar in the sauna.
So Docs sauna conversation was initially not with LeVar?It was just a placeholder, yeah.
The conversations really changed once LeVar agreed to do the show.
I was like, Welcome to the party.
to succeed in a world that is dominated by white owners, you have to hide your rage.
Of course, at the beginning ofepisode six, they lose.
There were boycotts and Doc gave a very tearful speech about feeling unloved by the country he loves.
I thought,well, that is a different Doc than the one you saw in 2013.
But Doc really did invite Elgin back to Staples.
What did theswishmean to you?I always knew I wanted the show to end with Elgin.
It removes them and restores the legend to the arena and the game to the legend.
Lets talk about the scene in the restaurant where Shelly has a confrontation with Justine.
Justine was a character you created for the show, right?Yeah, a composite character.
For Doc and V and Shelly, we wanted a confidante for each of those characters.
That feels so California to me.
She had a whole first marriage.
Harriet is such an amazing character actress because she goes deep before she comes to set.
She does not want to look at the ugly things shes done.
She does not want to look at the ugly things her husbands done.
She believes and Shelly Sterling has said this in interviews racism means overt violence.
It means bad words, in quotes.
She struggles to understand, and you see this in episode four, how their landlording policies constitute racism.
There are a couple of times where the show makes references to Donald Trump.
You get rid of one bad guy, and then the storys over and everyone moves on.
Did he ever have a conversation like that with her?That was a scripted, fictionalized moment.
The moment of her buying lunch for someone else that actually happened.
According to our research that happened to Blake Griffin.
Shes a benevolent owner.
LeVar was inviting him to show his anger.
She was compromised in all kinds of ways, like you see in episode five.
He helped her adopt kids.
Hed been her employer for a long time.
I always knew I didnt want to see V until the back half of the finale.
Theyre treated as either helpmates or sex objects.
That was the exciting thing about being a woman and telling the story.
I really wanted to make them feel vital and take their inner struggles seriously.
That shock was genuine in some places and it was performed in others.
