‘All American: Homecoming’ Boss Reflects On Series Finale & Three Seasons Of Spotlighting HBCUs: “I’m Proud Of All Of It”
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the series finale of All American: Homecoming.
After three seasons, All American: Homecoming came to an end Monday night.
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After the way the penultimate episode ended, there was quite a bit of ground to cover in the finale, but somehow most of the storylines were wrapped by the end of the broadcast hour. The news the series would not be renewed came as production was ending on Season 3, so these stories were in place before anyone knew it was officially ending.
Simone admitted her feelings to Lando and, by the end of the episode, he’d come around to opening himself up to a relationship with her again. Not only that, but Simone also makes the decision to go public with her cancer diagnosis after rumors spread that she might have been using performance enhancing drugs, and she’s met with acceptance not just from her team but from the broader tennis community.
Keisha finds a way to finish her finals in time to make it on tour as a backup dancer, thanks to a little help from Cam. After he finds out what she did to help him in the previous episode, he decides to pay back the favor by stepping up as her partner for her dance final. Ultimately, it makes him realize he never fell out of love with Keisha, despite her transgressions.
Then there’s JR, who finally, successfully, establishes a club baseball team at Bringston with a little help from Damon, whose just been signed to an MLB team. He’s using his signing bonus to lend a hand to his alma mater, and while he’s hoping he might also be able to win Simone back in the process, he soon realizes they’ve become different people since they broke up.
In the interview below, showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll broke down the episode with Deadline and explained about how the finale serves as a proper ending for these characters, even though the cancellation came a bit prematurely.
DEADLINE: Now that you’ve ended the show, I’m curious, are you the type of writer who continues to think beyond the finale to what those characters’ lives are like, or do you leave them where they are in that last episode for now?
NKECHI OKORO CARROLL: Shockingly, this is my first series finale in this way. I think I’ve just been really blessed to be on shows that have had a substantive run. But, when we ended the season, I already had the vision for what their senior year would be like — what Simone’s senior year in particular would be like, and then what Keisha’s story was post graduation, and Nate’s story was post graduation. So, because I’d already thought ahead before we received the news that the show wasn’t moving forward, in my mind, they’re off doing that. Simone is having the dopest senior year of her life and finally, with Lando. All good things happening that she’s fought so hard for since childhood are finally coming to fruition. Everyone is off living that Season 4 story of unadulterated joy and dreams coming true.
DEADLINE: I ask that in part because I’m curious on your thoughts of where Keisha and Cam are post-finale. JR doesn’t get to tell her how he feels, either. Why did you choose to leave that door open but not fully resolve things?
CARROLL: I have a lot of thoughts, because it was my pitch that they needed to go through this. They got together freshman year in just sort of a hookup way, and then we watched them grow up together. But Keisha especially has not really spent time alone learning to love herself, and in order for her to have any kind of healthy relationship, I just felt very strongly that she needed that. It’s a part of this journey this season. Then, [she] realized that she messed up and messed up one of the best things in her life, and then [she’s] fighting to get him back. But it’s not that easy, because Cam is also in this new phase of growing. It finally made her realize, like, ‘Oh, wait, as hard as I’m fighting for the guy I love, why have I never fought for myself in that same way?’ So I really wanted to end it in a place of not the ‘Oh, she’s got two guys to choose from. Which will she choose?’ cliffhanger. Not from the perspective of the whole JR thing was for nothing, and she ended up with Cam…I wanted it to end up being part of a bigger story of what led her to realize it like, ‘Oh, I need to find some time to just date myself and love myself and not look for my hero, not look for my security, not look for my validation in other people.’ To find that chapter of loving herself first, which would actually make her a better whole version of her, should she and Cam one day return to each other.
DEADLINE: I did enjoy seeing Cam and Keisha eventually opening up to each other in a way they never would have previously. When Keisha tells Cam about her history of self sabotage, and then again in this finale, when Cam tells Keisha he was afraid to talk about their futures if they weren’t together.
CARROLL: [They’re issues] that I don’t often feel fully necessarily get explored in traditional YA shows. It’s the drama of the breakup. It’s the sad look across the room. It’s all those things, which are all fun, and we loved incorporating that, but this was a relationship that had gone on for a while with characters, especially in Cam, that we’ve known since high school. I really wanted to give it this moment of really analyzing the sort of the chemistry of a breakup like that, and the chemistry of what is going on inside you in terms of your discoveries about yourself. Their relationship just felt like it deserved that.
DEADLINE: I feel like all the characters really start to mature a lot this season, and they all handle scenarios much differently than they previously might have. How do you start to put them in these situations and figure out how they have and haven’t changed?
CARROLL: Well, that was a big thing for this season. When I sat down in the writers room to talk about the arcs for this season and what I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted for each character, one of the things I stressed is they’re not the same people we met Season 1. Freshman year of college, you’re coming in, and it’s actually the first time you’re truly a young adult, because there are no parents around to make those decisions for you, and you’re figuring life out. So…What does that growth look like? They’re gonna encounter the same situations. They’re still young adults. It’s still college. Life is still messy, and also the real adult life is knocking right. For Nate and the law school applications and what that means for his relationship, Keisha and how she continues dance after school, Simone and the real life battle of being a young black woman with cancer and what that means for how you look at life after that, which was very, very much inspired by a couple very close friends of mine who’d gone through something similar.
People keep thinking about cancer as an older woman’s medical issue. I’ve been the witness that has stood by people who had to battle it in their mid 20s, and it’s such a different experience, and that was part of the reason why I wanted to tell this story. So as we’re throwing these scenarios at them, I’m like, ‘But how does junior year, older, more mature Simone handle those situations [differently] than freshman Simone would have? How does more mature, senior year Keisha to handle these situations, versus freshman year Keisha?’That was very intentional on our part as we talked through their growth. Maturity doesn’t mean they’re perfect. They’re going to make mistakes. And guess what? They’re going to grow up, become parents, and still make mistakes, but it’s always going to look different. So what’s that growth for them?
DEADLINE: I want to touch more on Simone’s breast cancer journey. Why was this a good moment for you to introduce that storyline for her?
CARROLL: Because she’s at the height of everything. Her tennis career has taken off. She got the boyfriend. In your early 20s, you sort of feel like your whole life is ahead of you. The world is your oyster. And when you get a real life and death wake up call at that young age, what does that look like and how do you navigate it? Quite frankly, there’s so many, especially young Black women, who are going through that, and unfortunately in the medical field, aren’t necessarily being believed because they’re so young… until they advocate and fight and argue for the right tests and argue to be heard, and then finally, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, they have X.’ So we wanted to pay tribute to those young women who were legitimately going through this in real life, and help them be seen, and also just help move the conversation forward. Please, could we listen regardless of age? Could we listen to our young Black women when they are telling you what is going on with their body?
DEADLINE: I must say, as someone who has remained Team Lando, I feel very validated. Last time we spoke about this show, you told me you were in the middle of shooting one of your favorite episodes ever, which it now seems was that Simone and Lando episode. How did the idea for that episode come about?
CARROLL: Oh, it’s no secret to anyone how much I love Dawson’s Creek. One of my favorite, favorite episodes of Dawson’s Creek was when Joey (Katie Holmes) and Pacey (Joshua Jackson) got stuck in the fictitious Walmart or whatever, overnight. It was really just predominantly an episode about the two of them, and it’s when Joey realized that Pacey never actually fell out of love with her, that it’s just something he learned to live with. It is truly one of my favorite episodes. I talk about it all the time. My friends are so over all of it. They’re over my perpetual love for Pacey, and so it’s something I talked about ad nauseam with my co-showrunner, Marqui [Jackson]. When we were friends, like he was writing on House, and I was writing on Bones, and our entire career is coming up together…he has heard me talk about this episode so much. So when we were breaking the season, I was like, ‘We need to find these moments to really make the Simone and Lando connection. It’s not enough that she just turns around like oh well, I want to be with him now. We really have to see that moment of connection, and when he really steps up for her in a big way, and her cancer treatment and everything.’
So Marqui was basically like, ‘Oh, I want to write that episode, and I know the version of the episode I want to do, and I want to surprise you.’ So as we got closer to the episode, and we’re getting ready to get into the room to break, he was like, ‘I want to write a version of your favorite episode and give you this rom-com, 42 minutes that’s really just about these two characters falling in love and not even realizing it. And I was like, ‘Man, if that’s not a good friend.’ I talked about it for 14 years, and he’s like, ma’am, I need you to discuss something else. So it was Marqui Jackson’s idea to do it as a solo with the two of them.
DEADLINE: If, in a perfect world, this season was longer, is there anything you wish you could’ve fleshed out more that you didn’t get to?
CARROLL: I mean, 13 to 15 episode seasons are kind of the norm. It was more a thing of like if we had more seasons where we were going to take them and, again, exploring, like I said earlier, that senior year and that moment of celebration where this is the final year. you’ve achieved the thing, right? You’ve made it through high school. You’ve made it through college. You’ve made it through D1 athletics, which is bananas, and now you’re launching into the world. The celebration of that, that’s the part I always wish we’d been able to get our characters to, completing that story of their college journey.
DEADLINE: Is there any opportunity to revisit any of these characters in All American?
CARROLL: That’s the beauty of the All American universe, and that’s why I love that it’s a universe, is because it’s so connected…that the ebb and flow of characters coming back and being an inspiration to the new characters that are coming out, that’s always a part of the fabric of the show. So as much as we’re able to, Simone’s world does not stop existing because Homecoming isn’t on the air, because the All American universe is still on the air. Same for all the rest of the characters. Mitchell, especially, is from South LA. He’s from Crenshaw. So we’re absolutely keeping that door open.
DEADLINE: What are you most proud of about All American: Homecoming?
CARROLL: I’m proud of all of it. I’m proud that we got to put the HBCU experience on primetime TV for everyone to understand and see. I’m proud of the fact that we’ve heard back from people who are looking at HBCUs for their college experience when they might not have been before. I’m proud of being able to showcase the incredible talent we had on the show — Geffri Maya, Mitchell Edwards, like these are my babies who’ve been with me since All American. So, to be able to see them fly on their own show…where they took them above and beyond what we were giving them on the page, that’s a source of pride for me. Truthfully, across the board, with all the talent on the show. The fact that we got to showcase Netta’s dancing, the fact that we got to showcase Mitchell’s singing, the fact that we got to showcase Martin Bobb-Semple’s photography. He’s an amazing photographer. That is part of the reason why we made that part of the character. So I’m very proud that we got to explore the well rounded talent of all of the amazing actors that we had on the show through their characters and just give the world a little taste of what HBCUs and all of them have to offer. They all have such bright futures. I’m their biggest fan. I’m so excited for everything that comes next for them. I think that’s what I’m most proud of.
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