Yahoo Lifestyle 'All American' Showrunner Explains Why They 'Reset' the Cast for Season 7 (Exclusive)
All American is going back to high school in Season 7, but the first episode is already promising the messy and inspiring drama we love from the football series. Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) and Layla (Greta Onieogou) are still in the honeymoon period of real life, but get a crash course in "adulting" in the first episode. Jordan quickly realizes that being best friends with his students as he takes on being the quarterback coach at South Crenshaw doesn't mesh well with having to be their authority figure. When his star quarterback doesn't feel it necessary to show up for practice, Jordan realizes he needs to redraw boundaries with the students if he wants a real shot at making a difference with the team and in their lives.
🤩 📺 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter & get the scoop on the latest TV news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🤩🎥
The teens definitely need some adult guidance. Preach's (Kareem Grimes) daughter Amina (Alexis Chikaeze) takes center stage as All American brings the show back to high school football. She's got her heart set on Khalil (Antonio Bell), a young kid whose tangential relationship with a local gang is starting to jeopardize her future. When Khalil tries to put distance between the two to keep Amina from harm, she walks right into the arms of the new Beverly High quarterback, KJ (Nathan Logan McIntyre). KJ has just transferred from Oakland because his parents are separating, leaving a championship team to lead a losing Beverly Hills squad to greatness. That journey is complicated by his dad, Cassius (Osy Ikhile), who is Beverly's new head coach and has some demons of his own that he's trying to outrun.
Parade caught up with All American showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll to talk about the already emerging love triangle, growing pains for the original vortex members, and what to expect from the new season.
Related: Everything to Know About All American Season 7
What was appealing to you and the writers about resetting this show and going back to high school?
The heart of All American was always about our youth, led by Spencer James, and the pursuit of the seemingly impossible dream. It so often feels like some of our teens feel like they’re not given permission to dream big. It’s just about survival. The heart of the show for me was always about watching the youth find themselves and accomplish their dreams despite the obstacles that were put in front of them. The show is an unapologetic celebration of that. We saw that happen. They got older and they were achieving success in college.
For Spencer, once he was drafted into the NFL, it felt like, "Okay, there’s a version of this story where we just see following the adults. Or we stick with the heart of the show and do a reset." So we brought it back to Beverly and Crenshaw with a new generation of youth and having several of our OG vortex members as reluctant adults and they are being pushed into the roles of coaches and aunts and uncles.
Who would you say is the center of the show now that Spencer James has moved on?
Spencer was the anchor of the show and his journey. But as the seasons went on, it really took on much more of an ensemble feel. That’s what we’re continuing in Season 7. We have our new starting quarterback, KJ, at Beverly. His arrival and his dad’s entry into the storyline are definitely big anchor points this season. But so is Jordan’s journey as the new quarterback coach at South Crenshaw. He’s stepping up and trying to be this new mature Jordan, who is now married and carrying on Billy’s legacy. He’s having an impact on the youth and helping them pursue their dreams. We have our anchor points at Beverly and our anchor points at Crenshaw, and then the existing rivalry between the two schools brings them into each other’s orbits.
Let’s talk about Jordan for a second, because he does really struggle with being the cool-guy coach but also the authority figure in the premiere. What does that journey look like for him going forward?
It’s exactly that. He is young. He just graduated college. He’s new to the position, and within five years, he’s back to being peers with these guys. You wouldn’t really recognize the age difference. That’s the main part he’s struggling with. His youth and his proximity to their age is a superpower and a curse. How he continues to find his footing as a coach and authority figure in their life while not losing the thing that’s special to him is what we’ll see continue to evolve, particularly as he takes an interest in Khalil’s life.
Khalil, who we met in Season 6, is a young kid with a ton of potential who’s just grown up in a certain way in Crenshaw. He’s been put on a certain path because of his dad’s gang affiliation, and now he’s discovering football. He’s discovering a potential future for himself that’s helped along by Jordan. That relationship between Jordan and Khalil at heart has a similar essence to the relationship between Billy and Spencer. Seeing Jordan on that journey but not mimicking his father is so great this season.
Meanwhile, KJ is kind of mirroring Spencer by being a fish out of water at Beverly. How is his journey different from what Spencer went through in Season 1?
KJ is coming from a championship win in school. He’s coming from what he felt was a perfect life. He had the perfect parents. He was at the perfect football school. He was the starting quarterback. Life has been really good for KJ. But at the end of the premiere we see his world get kicked out from under him. He realizes that things weren’t so perfect between his parents and he’s blindsided by them separating. This move to Los Angeles, and his father taking this job, uprooting KJ from everything he knows to an underdog team puts KJ’s Division 1 dreams and goals into jeopardy. There’s just a lot that isn’t feeling right to KJ about everything that is happening in his life right now. That’s something he’s not used to.
Spencer was someone who was used to obstacles and used to being an underdog and having to fight for everything he earned. KJ’s not actually used to being the underdog. He’s been the golden child and is now getting a very realistic view of what the world has been like for others. That is something that is going to mature and grow him as he tries to establish himself on this team and become a leader. He’s also going to have a more mature relationship with his father. He realizes that he’s been holding his parents up on a pedestal. But they are human; they make mistakes. He realizes that even the people he loves keep secrets and some of those secrets affect his life. This is the year that blows KJ’s life wide open, and he’s going to have to make choices about the kind of man he wants to be in the fallout.
Related: Everything to Know About the Friday Night Lights Reboot
We are only one episode into this season, and you can already see the romantic drama spiraling. Do you have a nickname for this incestuous group, or are we just calling it Vortex 2.0?
We just refer to them as the "messy group." At 16 and 17 years old, it all feels so high stakes. It’s first loves. So much of it feels like life or death. It’s not until you get out of high school and you look back that you realize, “Oh, that was nothing.” But when you’re in it…it all just feels so heightened. We’re meeting them at the peak of that. We have Amina, who has been so focused on Khalil and is so determined to prove to him that she is grown enough to be with him and is the right woman for him. In the process of trying to prove that, she ends up right in KJ’s orbit. Now all of a sudden, there’s a new guy in the picture who she befriends very quickly. They have this immediate chemistry in a friendship perspective. But it’s hard to miss that there could potentially be more, definitely on KJ’s side, if not both.
The writers' room is already split on who they’re rooting for her to be with and the shipper names. At least they both start with "K," so that makes it easier. But yeah, there are already fights and yelling down the hallways out of each other’s offices depending on who they are rooting for her to be with.
I mean, it is very much giving early seasons Spencer/Olivia/Layla love triangle vibes.
Indeed! And the fact that they go to different schools just opens up the world so much more because they have different pairings. Some are spending more time together just by nature of being at school together. It’s made it a lot of fun for us to explore all the options.
Back to the adults, Layla is also struggling in the premiere. She hilariously believes she peaked in high school, but she owns her own record label, so her peaking is not the same as when other people say that about themselves.
Right? If she did peak, it’s not the worst thing in the world, because she peaked in a way that most adults peak. But that is a journey for Layla. She’s a young wife. She’s married the man of her dreams. She has her club. She has her record label. She’s launched successful artists. It’s a question of what’s next because Layla needs something to drive her. Part of her journey is figuring out what it is about the fight that she enjoys. What is the healthy part of the fight that she needs to find in this next level as she figures out what’s next for her, both in her music career and other aspects of her life. It’ll take a minute for her to find it, but she’s not stressing about it. She’s focused on it. But this is a much more mature Layla who has found security in herself, has found security in her marriage, and is not so volatile to the ups and downs that are coming as she figures out what’s next for her.
And Coop knows exactly where she wants to go next. She’s going to law school, but what does her arc look like this season?
For the law school part, she’s not the underdog anymore. She’s a straight-A student. She befriends a professor at the law school who really opens her mind to law in a different way than Laura did. That really sort of completes the picture for Coop. For once, there’s an expectation of greatness from her that adds its own pressure. For Coop, the bigger pressure is going to come from her past. She’s trying to help Preach raise Amina as much as possible. She is not her mother. She’s not trying to be her mother, but she does feel some guilt and responsibility for the fact that Amina’s mother is not around because Preach shot Mo to save Coop’s life.
Now that Amina is older and she’s on the cusp of womanhood, it’s a time in her life when she really needs her mom, and she doesn’t have her. That starts to manifest in a lot of ways and behaviors with Amina that make Coop realize they owe her answers that weren’t appropriate to give her when she was 10 or 11 years old. Now they owe it to her in order to stop the flow of hurt. To do that, Coop really has to go back and face decisions she made in the past that put her in that alley. It’s hard for her to charge forward into this amazing future that is waiting for her when there are things in her past that she sort of buried and never expected to resurface.
All American Season 7 will officially premiere on Monday, Feb. 3, and continue with new episodes every Monday at 8 p.m. ET on CW. Episodes will be available to stream the next day on the CW app.
