As the culture said goodbye to The CW’s All American: Homecoming during Monday night’s season finale, the show’s creator said she is grateful for all that the series achieved within three seasons.
Nkechi Okoro Carroll’s heart was heavy as she kissed her baby goodbye, but she also expressed that the moment was bittersweet, as the series was the first that she had created from the bottom up. For her, the goal now is to focus on the amazing, positive memories collected from the pilot all the way through the final episode.
Her goal for the show
“My biggest goal for All American: Homecoming was to bring HBCU life and HBCU culture to prime-time TV, and quite frankly, back to prime-time TV because we hadn’t really seen it on network TV since A Different World,” Carroll told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “We had The Quad, and we’ve had a couple of other shows, but they were cable shows, and so I took a lot of pride in, for this generation, wanting to expose them to HBCU life and what all of that represents, and to have it be a celebration of our community, a celebration of our culture, a celebration of HBCU life. So many of my family members, my cousins, my in-laws, and I’m surrounded by people who went to an HBCU; even my manager is an HBCU grad.”
“To be able to represent that part of the culture in a proud, celebratory way, while also just continuing to give narrative to Black joy and our Black teens’ dreams and aspirations, especially in athletics, and watching them pursue another spin on Black excellence, being able to put that on TV and spark real, life-changing conversations in our community — those were my goals, and I feel like we achieved that with the show,” she continued.
A love letter to Black women athletes
Carroll is also grateful to have written a beautiful love story for Black women tennis players through centering on the main character, Simone (Geffri Maya), and her love for the sport. It was also important to Carroll to pay homage to the history of Black baseball players through the show’s central theme.
“We were also able to drive forward conversations on the financial story and picture for HBCU athletics, the history of baseball, and the Black community and the Negro League. And most especially, one of the biggest things I wanted to do with this series was for it to be a way for me to give our dope, amazing Black female tennis players their flowers while they’re alive to see it.”
She added, “The Serenas, the Venuses, the Naomis, the Cocos — this is my love letter to them because I feel like, for some reason, people watch what they do, and they don’t truly always celebrate what it costs them and just how exceptional it is. It’s almost like they took the excellence for granted, so I wanted to create a show around the beginnings of someone like that, which is what Simone’s character was, so that I could give them their flowers. Because I see you and the hard work that went into becoming who you are.”
On her growth as a storyteller
Carroll views every one of the shows she’s a part of as her baby, and All American: Homecoming is no different.
“They’re all different children,” she said. “I have an older child, I have an adopted child, I have a child I gave birth to, and so, for me, Homecoming was just another one of my children. It was one of my children that I gave birth to, and it grew me so much as a writer, as a showrunner, as a boss, as a human, as a mom, as an athlete. In so many ways … all of us in the writer’s room really wrote from our hearts and focused on bringing the authenticity and the truth of our journeys to these stories. So even from that, we all grew so much, just as people and humans.”
“As we were looking back over our college stories, our young adulthood, and how we navigate the world now as adults … from that perspective, the show has been invaluable. But I try to have that be the case with all of my projects that for having gone through them, we’re all better people.”
What’s next for Nkechi Okoro Carroll?
Given the success of the All American universe, Carroll is even more inspired and fired up to continue sharing stories that change the world for the better. She expressed gratitude for being able to see All American: Homecoming through to a third season.
“This is sort of the driving mission of my production company — to create stories and make the world a better place than how we found it,” Carroll said. “That’s always at the forefront of the stories I’m telling. By telling this story, by taking these characters through this journey, am I helping our audience see a different way they could navigate the world? Am I making even one person who watches this show move through the world a little bit differently, in a more positive light, in a more aspirational light, in a more cheer-for-thy-neighbor light? In a more shoot-for-your-dreams, never-cut-yourself-short [light]?”
She concluded, “If I’m doing any of those things, then that is one person that is contributing to this world being a better place than before the show was on the air. And so from that perspective, I continue to pursue that in my stories. I think I’m just having sort of gone through this with the All American universe and everything. I think it just encourages me to keep telling the stories, as long as there’s an authenticity to them. As long as there’s a passion to the story that wants to be told, there’s always going to be an audience for it.”
She also has another series NBC’s Found which is set to debut its second season on NBC this week.
