The news that Daniel Ezra was being shifted from series regular to a recurring guest star may have been shocking for fans of “All American,” but that wasn’t the case for showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll.
“It was a joint decision. One of the beauties of having a lead actor who is also one of my best friends is we talk all the time,” Carroll told TheWrap. The executive producer has long known that there may come a time when her series could lose its lead. “From day one, it’s always been like, when that day comes, we’re going to meet together, we’re going to talk it out and we’re going to figure it out.”
Once Carroll and Ezra starting discussing his departure in Season 5, they started planning what that meant for his character Spencer James in Season 6 and beyond. Inspired by the life of pro football player Spencer Paysinger, “All American” first premiered in 2018 on The CW and has chronicled Spencer’s journey from high school football star to a pro player in the NFL.
“We were truly talking about what’s left for Spencer to achieve? What gives him his happy ending but also leaves room for the legacy of Spencer James?” Carroll added.
That’s how the team behind “All American” landed on Spencer realizing his NFL dreams and marrying the love of his life by the end of Season 6. Both of those plot points lined up with Paysinger’s real life. The linebacker signed with the New York Giants in 2011 as an undrafted free agent and was part of the Super Bowl XLVI winning team. He also married his childhood friend, Blair Paysinger.
“While Olivia is not Blair — the women on the show are an amalgamation of a lot of women in his life — the essence of getting to marry that true love that he’s known since since high school, that was the only part that was missing,” Carroll explained. At first, the team decided it was enough to just show Spencer and Olivia (Samantha Logan) getting engaged. But the more Carroll thought about it, the more she realized that wasn’t quite enough: they needed to show their actual wedding.
“That is when we started having a conversation with The CW about doing two additional episodes to really complete this chapter. They were so supportive, both The CW and the studio, about completing the chapter the way both Daniel and I felt was right for both characters,” Carroll said. “That is the ultimate depiction of teamwork, where the lead actor, the showrunner, the studio, the network, we were all aligned in that we do not shortchange this story.”
Carroll also noted that, with so many hands involved in making a season of television, the process can feel “adversarial” at times.
“I’ve been very blessed to be able to have a studio and a network that will legitimately pick up the phone and listen to me when I’m advocating for something maybe we need more of or a direction we need to go in. It’s truly been a beautiful partnership,” Carroll said.
Moving forward, Spencer James will still be “alive and well and doing tremendous things” in the world of “All American,” but he will be doing so with Ezra as a guest star. Carroll didn’t reveal which characters would be filling his cleats in Season 7, but she assured TheWrap she has a plan in place.
“What I will say — that is definitive — is this is not a complete switching of casts from one show to another. It really is a ending of a chapter and a beginning of a next chapter that is a mix of old characters, a mix of some new characters coming in that makes sense for the storyline,” she shared. “This has always been a universe, and that universe continues to grow and expand. There’s so many stories to tell because, at the heart, this is a family drama that is based around the Black youth in our country and their pursuit of a seemingly impossible dream. For the mothership show, that specifically is the dream of making it to the NFL for our young boys, and that is what the essence of the show will continue to be even as our characters grow up and take on different roles.”
