It’s been 20 years since spouses Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood regularly worked in network television, on shows like A Different World and New York Undercover that were part of a big wave in the ‘90s of TV shows built around black characters, often telling uniquely black stories. By the time the Bythewoods went off to make movies like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights the broadcast networks had largely retreated from that space, as networks like Fox, the WB, and UPN, which had built audiences in their early days by programming shows with minority leads, opted for “broader” (read: whiter) series, and as network TV overall ceded scripted political material almost entirely to cable.
But as the Bythewoods return to network TV with Shots Fired — a new event series starring Stephan James and Sanaa Lathan as Justice Department investigators looking into police shootings in a racially-divided North Carolina community — the landscape has changed significantly. Scandal, Empire, and This Is Us have been the last three network dramas to become ratings phenomena, and all have African-American leads and directly address racial issues. There’s room on network for a show like American Crime, whose current season is also set in North Carolina and deals with violence that crosses lines of race and class. Sitcoms like black-ish and The Carmichael Show frankly discuss race, and TV as a whole has become both more creatively adventurous and a bit more socially conscious thanks to the many creative descendants of shows like The Wire.
That leaves Shots Fired (it debuts Wednesday night at 8; I’ve seen the first six episodes) as a natural fit in the current environment, but also as less remarkable than it might have seemed even a few years ago. It’s timely in its frequent invocation of Ferguson and other incidents of violence between police and the black community — though the Bythewoods start with a role reversal, as the case that draws federal attention involves a young black cop (Wire alum Mack Wilds) shooting a white student — it features an impressive cast, including Helen Hunt as the North Carolina governor, Richard Dreyfuss as an influential businessman, Will Patton and Stephen Moyer as local cops, and Aisha Hinds as an activist pastor who sees this case as an opportunity to effect real change (and/or to advance her own career), and gets strong work from them. (Hinds and Lathan — whose veteran investigator is also a self-destructive drunk with a bad temper — are alone worth the price of admission.) As James and Lathan’s characters uncover a second sketchy police-involved shooting (this time white-on-black), Shots Fired functions equally as mystery and social commentary, but it feels a bit padded and repetitive as it goes, and occasionally had me longing for a procedural spin-off where Lathan’s character becomes a hard-boiled private eye. Still, it’s an admirable big swing for Fox, and one that connects frequently enough to justify its ambitions.
I sat down with the Bythewoods at the Television Critics Association press tour in January to discuss the series, their thoughts on how TV has changed in their absence, how the show plays differently as a result of the current presidential administration (which was, when we spoke, still days away from being the inauguration), and more.
It’s been a while since you guys worked regularly in TV. Back in the ’90s, would this kind of thing have been possible even as a mini-series?
Reggie Rock Bythewood: I don’t think so. Last time I was on Fox was for New York Undercover, and it really at that time, it was, “Oh wow, there’s an African-American lead and a Latino lead,” and nobody else had done that type of thing. But could we have done a narrative where we really kind of dug into an issue like this? To be honest with you, forget about then, I’m surprised we’re doing it now. I’m like, “Are we really doing this? On network TV?” Honestly, that feels surprising. If you would have asked me a year and a half ago, I would have been, “I don’t think that’s going to fly on network TV.”
So what do you think changed?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: Dana Walden, the head of Fox, said she wanted to something in this area and gave us the freedom to create the show and the story that we wanted to tell. The call came right after the Michael Brown murder, and the eruption in Ferguson that clearly she was moved by. I know a lot of people are surprised it’s on Fox; we were surprised, but surprised in a positive way in that this is an amazing opportunity, they want to do a show about this, we want to do a show about this, so let’s take advantage and do it.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: It just felt like it really was time, in that there were so many things happening in the country. These discussions were being had, but it wasn’t being dealt with in TV, and not in a real sort of in-depth way. It’s something that Gina and I had actually been talking about a lot. And so when Fox had expressed interest in doing something in the arena, were were like, “Okay, well, we got it.” And it was great.
The first episode has a scene where [James’ character] is talking to his bosses about taking the case, and they bring up the Attorney General and the importance of looking into injustice and racial issues even if police may be involved. And now Jeff Sessions has been proposed for A.G. in real life, and we have a very different sort of administration than you guys might have expected when you were first writing this. Do you feel like any of that is going to play differently now?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: It’s interesting in that it worked at the time we were writing, but now that there’s been change, it also works in a different way.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: And maybe a better way, to be honest with you.
Gina Prince-Bythewood: So that it comes across as this administration being so open about, “We’re going to put a black face in front of this so that we don’t get yelled at or in trouble.” Our hope is that he doesn’t get put in as A.G.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: Part of the hope is that when President Obama took office, the civil rights division of the Department of Justice was rejuvenated, and they started doing cases they hadn’t done under the Bush administration. And they started investigating police departments, Ferguson, and Missouri and Baltimore. And they started investigating abuses for voter suppression. The question and the desire really is we hope that this civil rights division of the Department of Justice still really has some sort of bite to it. We’ve done a bunch of research and have met with people who are United States attorneys, and we happen to know that’s a big concern of theirs.
But we did this a while ago, and it’s taken a while to get on the air, and so the initial narrative did not have someone like Sessions being head of the Department of Justice. But I think in a weird way, I think it plays just as well, maybe even better because it raises the question of where’s the Department of Justice coming from? They come into this town, and people aren’t really trusting them. Are you working for us? Are you working for them? And so it might work better.
I’ve talked about this over the years with John Ridley, with David Simon, with television storytellers who are trying to do issue-oriented storytelling: finding the balance between making the philosophical points they’re trying to make, while also entertaining the audience enough that they will sit through the other part of it. How did the two of you figure out how to draw that line?
Reggie Rock Bythewood: Again, one our first mantras was get the audience to the edge of their seat, and while they’re leaning forward, hit them with the truth. So we thought if we want to create change, we don’t want to make it feel like medicine. If we wanted to have a show that would create meaningful dialogue, we can’t make it feel like a documentary, but we also need to make it feel real and tangible.
Gina Prince-Bythewood: We knew foremost it had to be a really good mystery. And then you want people to come back. We needed to create characters that you wanted to live with every week. And as writers, it all starts with characters. So we were always cognizant of the balance between a social drama and a great mystery and ultra personal stories.
Every time Sanaa’s on screen, she’s so electric that it becomes this strange thing: “I’m having a good time watching this show about how terrible racial injustice is.”
Reggie Rock Bythewood: But you know what’s really interesting … there’s a former DEA agent who was a template for Sanaa’s character. And in talking to her, you talk about some of the issues you deal with. But then you start getting into her personal life, and all the person issues she’s dealt with just as a woman in law enforcement, who’s seen so many bad things. And then the character would start to come alive. And so ultimately, while there is this social aspect of the show, it’s fueled by these distinct characters.
In the time that you guys have been off working in movies, have you had much time to actually watch TV?
Reggie Rock Bythewood: A couple of shows.
What are your shows?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: The Americans, Homeland.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: The Killing. You watch some shows I don’t watch, right?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: I love Parenthood and thirtysomething and My So-Called Life; the big character dramas. But most recently, there’s a couple of shows we have together that we watch..
Reggie Rock Bythewood: We’re both down with This Is Us. I was like, “I don’t think I’m gonna watch that.” And then it was like “Hey, you know.” It was good. It’s good.
You said during your panel that you’re viewing this as a ten-hour movie. Structurally, that’s a complicated thing to maintain. If people are watching week to week, chapter by chapter, do you say “This hour is going to be about this, and this will be about that,” or it’s just “This is the story from beginning to end and we’ll tell it this way”?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: I think we said ten-hour movie because we know it’s got a beginning, middle and end. We weren’t motivated by having to “up” ourselves every week with a cliffhanger, and each one is not self-contained; it motivates the next, it motivates the next. So we always saw it as a whole, but it was also fueled by the actors and the acting style, and my shooting style as well.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: I think, also, if you do a 120-page screenplay, you can only do but so much. And so the fact that we had ten hours to really dig into Stephen Moyer’s character, and dig into Helen Hunt’s character, and all these other characters was really satisfying. But as well, yeah, we were conscious that we wanted people to come back. You watch hour six, it doesn’t necessarily end on a cliffhanger, but a lot of them do. And that was fun. It was fun to do that, but I do think, yeah, this is the beginning, middle and end. This is the whole story we want to tell. It wasn’t a burden; it was a great opportunity to have. We have actually ten hours to tell this story.
[Shots Fired producer Brian Grazer] has said there could be a continuation of this series in success. Regardless of the future or lack thereof of this project, was the experience of this satisfying enough that you would feel like you’d want to do more TV beyond it, or you’re happy to go back to features now?
Reggie Rock Bythewood: I don’t think that we’re interested in giving up features. That’s the world that we love. But I would say for myself, it was satisfying to be able to have time to slow things down and get into all the characters in a way I would never be able to do in a film.
Gina Prince-Bythewood: I love the bigness of film, and we both have projects that we have upcoming. But there is something very exciting about the reach of television, and when this was first written, we didn’t know whether it was going to be on cable or network. And we were surprised when Dana said “I want to put it on Fox.” And then you start thinking about, again, the reach that we hope the show can have. And TV is such a personal thing. People put you in their homes. So we’re excited about it.
If you could show these ten hours to the Gina and Reggie of Different World or New York Undercover, how do you think they would react to the idea that this could be a TV thing now?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: We were always writing these “very special episodes” for those shows.
Reggie Rock Bythewood: To be fair to that question, I think we’ve always aspired [to this]. The difference with us being on A Different World then New York Undercover, which were great experiences, is we weren’t running the show. But we were always trying to some socially relevant thing on A Different World. I was always going for it on New York Undercover. And so, I hadn’t thought about it this way since you asked the question, but I think in many ways this is the type of show that we aspire to do: an entertaining show that challenges perspectives. That’s all we’ve ever really wanted to do.
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@uproxx.com