‘All American’ Boss Reveals How She Came up With Series’ Dream-Fulfilling Ending

All American executive producer Nkechi Okoro Carroll had many calls to make when she learned that Season 8 would be the football drama’s last. She needed to alert her cast and crew. Then she needed to call Daniel Ezra, who played series star Spencer James for the first six seasons. Carroll wanted to know his availability not only to appear in the final season, but also to direct the final episode. Warning: Spoilers for the All American series finale ahead!

“It just felt like it was the perfect thing because not only is he an exceptional director, but he’s also been there since day one. He knows the actors, both the OG actors and the new generation,” Carroll shared. “He was the right person to bring the entire family home.”

The series finale brought Spencer’s journey full circle. He was MIA when his wife, Liv (Samantha Logan), was taken to the hospital in labor with their twin babies because he was negotiating a trade from his New York-based NFL team to Los Angeles with his cell phone locked away. One of the office staff saw Coop’s (Bre-Z) message on the local news that Spencer needed to come home and brought him his phone. He immediately rushed to the hospital mid-negotiation to be there for his wife and newborn kids.

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The babies arrived shortly after with 10 fingers and 10 toes, and Liv made it through her emergency C-section with no extra complications. She and Spencer announced to their entire extended family that they named the babies Mary and Corey, after Liv’s grandmother and Spencer’s biological father, respectively.

After spending the entire final season unfurling one hectic week in the life of the vortex, the series finale used its final minutes to jump forward six years. Khalil (Antonio J. Bell) played football at Stanford but then pivoted to medical school after saving Liv’s life earlier in the season. Amina (Alexis Chikaeze) became the youngest campaign manager to spearhead a winning Los Angeles city-wide campaign by helping Preach (Kareem Grimes) get elected to the city council. Coop was officially sworn in as a lawyer, and Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) was awarded high school coach of the year by the NFL for his work at Crenshaw. He, Layla (Greta Onieogou), their daughter Monica, and the rest of the Baker-Spencer family celebrated all the success by going to the Super Bowl to see Spencer play his last NFL game. The cherry on top was that KJ (Nathaniel McInTyre) was his quarterback for that final game.

That would have been enough for any finale, but Carroll had one more trick up her sleeve. Once she had Ezra’s buy-in, she called Taye Diggs. His character, Billy Baker, was killed off in Season 5, but Carroll couldn’t imagine ending the series without him. The final scene of the series saw Spencer and Jordan talking about football and legacy on the Billy Baker field. As they walked off, the camera panned around to reveal Billy watching them from the goalpost with an approving smile. He still watched over them, proud of the men they had become.

TV Insider spoke to Carroll about figuring out everyone’s happy ending for the series finale and what it means to her to have wrapped up eight seasons of All American.

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How long did it take to come up with a logical excuse for Spencer to be missing as long as he was this season?

Nkechi Okoro Carroll: Once I decided we were going to have the birth of the James twins and that Spencer was going to be missing, there was only one option: He would literally have to be on Mars or somewhere where’s not allowed to have his phone for this to happen. And it would only be if he was doing something for his family that was about creating the life he wanted for Liv and the twins. He did it at a time when he thought he could be MIA because Liv wasn’t due yet. She was with her family. He knew she was in safe hands with Jordan and Layla. He thought he could take this morning and try to give her this gift, thinking he had a few weeks until the babies were due. It all just happened on the same day.

I am going to be honest, I was starting to think he must be bleeding out in a ditch somewhere about two episodes ago.

It’s been interesting hearing the chatter of people saying, “Spencer’s not a deadbeat dad. He would never not be there for his kids. What are the writers doing?” Have a little faith! Of course he’s not a deadbeat dad. He’s not just ignoring calls! It had to be something astronomical.

He made it! And everyone got a happy ending. Was there anyone in particular that challenged you to come up with what their fulfilling ending would be?

We’ve known for a long time how we were going to end them; it just came down to the specificity of the details. I always knew Layla’s journey would involve her becoming a mom and having the relationship with her daughter that she wished she could have continued to have with her mom. That’s been such an important part of Layla’s journey. There was no version of us ending the story without her becoming a mother, and I’ve known that for years. I knew Jordan’s endpoint was always going to be tied to Billy’s legacy. I didn’t know that he was going to be taking over the program at Crenshaw as the football coach until Season 6. It was shortly after Billy’s death that Jordan started to step into his own and find his footing as a Baker man when I realized that the NFL was not going to be his legacy. The other half of Billy’s story was coaching, but it was figuring out how we have him achieve that without just copying his father. Jordan truly found his purpose and his calling. He’s excelled to the next level. Getting the award from the NFL, which is something Billy never got, was Jordan taking Billy’s legacy and taking it further.

With our next generation cast, I always knew I was going to reunite the Jeremy family, because I love happy endings and unicorns and rainbows. I always knew that KJ was going to make it to the NFL, but having him and Spencer end up on the same team, with Spencer sort of passing the baton, only came up over the course of the last season. Khalil was the one where I knew football was not going to be his endgame. The plan was always for football to get him to college and then for him to discover his real passion. I wasn’t sure what that passion would be until we got the Season 8 pickup and I was thinking about what we were going to do with the twins. The Bakers gave Khalil so much. They literally saved his life. It felt like the only way to honor that would be to have Khalil save Olivia and the twins. Once that became the focal point, it was no brainer. We all have that moment where something unlocks in us, “Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to do with my life,” and we got to see that happen in real time for Khalil.

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The thesis of this show has always been what it takes to make your dreams come true. Why was it important to show that not every dream was playing football or music, but also having characters become journalists, doctors, and campaign managers?

That is the reality of our youth. For every kid I meet that wants to be a writer or a professional basketball player, I am also meeting kids that want to be politicians and lawyers. They want to be activists and everything. That really was at the heart of the show. Yes, it started with Spencer’s story and Spencer’s journey, and it evolved into an ensemble. It has a sports underpinning, but at the end of the day, it was about our youth and them being able to dream big, and what it takes to achieve those dreams and overcome those obstacles. It was very important to us that it wasn’t just about the kids who had football dreams, but it was about all of their dreams and what that looked like.

Can we talk about the names of the twins? I was shocked one of them wasn’t named Billy.

We knew we wanted to name one of the twins Mary after Billy’s mom. None of us had a chance to meet her, but she had such an impact on his life and on the life of the Jeremy family. She connected the old and the new generation. We wanted to honor her by naming one of the twins after her. Then it became if both the twins were named after the Bakers, then where was the James legacy? If the girl twin is Mary, then the boy twin should be about the James legacy. Who was so important in Spencer’s life but was maybe cut short? This person’s legacy gets to live on in this kid in the way that Grandma Mary’s life was cut short. So, of course, it was Corey, because he and Spencer never had enough time.

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'All American' Cast Pitch Their Dream Spinoffs (Exclusive)

I made it to the Spencer and Jordan scene on the field before I started crying. What made you decide to end it with those two characters on the field?

I actually think I told Daniel in Season 5 that I always knew the final scene was going to take place on a football field. I knew the final scene was going to be about  their brotherhood, because their brotherhood was Billy’s legacy. The idea that two kids from two very different neighborhoods, with the same sort of dream, and how pursuing that dream turned their lives into this beautiful, bigger family village… It felt right to end on the two of them looking back on everything that football had given them. At the heart of that is Billy Baker. He was Jordan’s father and a father figure to Spencer. He was both of their coaches. He was the heart of everything for them. Now, as they are fathers and have matured into these adults, they realize that so much of who they are is because of what Billy poured into them. There was no other way to end the series than to honor that legacy.

Has there been any progression on the spinoff conversations?

No, there haven’t. Look, we love the All American universe. We feel like there’s so many stories still left to tell in this universe. If one day they decide they want to spin it off again, we’re here and we’re ready. Let’s do it. This was really about saying goodbye to these characters that we’ve had the honor to raise and grow up with. We wanted to see them achieve their dreams, and hopefully that inspires the fans that have been with us since Day 1 to also believe that they are worthy of dreaming and achieving those dreams as well.