TVLINE | Last time we spoke, you said fans should watch out for a “big” moment in the “very, very final scene” of the series finale. Just confirming: was Billy Baker’s appearance a big moment?
(Laughter) Yes, exactly.
TVLINE | I know you’ve been thinking about the end of this series for a long time. When did you land on this final scene and how has your vision changed over the years, if at all?
I knew I always wanted to end the series with Spencer having made it to the NFL and having a successful NFL career, and that he and Liv would be married and have kids. I knew Coop would always end up a lawyer, but we were going to take him on a circuitous path. And I knew that Jordan would find his legacy in Billy’s, and we had planted the seeds of a lot of that when we made those time capsule videos in Season 4. I knew that Layla’s journey would end with her coming full circle and having a daughter of her own and being the mother that she always wished she had. I’ve known about these things for a while.
Spencer moving his family back to Los Angeles and transferring to the fictional Los Angeles football team – that was part of the evolution. When we initially thought about these ideas, I didn’t know how many seasons we would have, I didn’t know to what extent we would be able to get Daniel (Ezra) back after he left as a series regular at the end of season 6. And he was so generous with his time. Every time we asked him to come back it was a yes, which is amazing. So that part – the whole “Oh, he wants to bring his family back to Los Angeles” part – was new to the storyline as we were figuring out this final season and what his NFL journey was like, what his retirement was like, what his house was like. So, it was little things like that (that changed over time). …We were so grateful that we were able to finish the show the way we wanted. This allowed us to present these storylines, along with their strings, and pay for them however we wanted.
The part with Billy Baker coming back at the end – it always felt like the brotherhood that started in football, which was Jordan and Spencer, would be the focus of the final scene. And it felt wrong to do this without Billy. Taye (Diggs) has been a part of this show for so long and the character of Billy Baker continues to be important to every other character on the show. It really became a question of “How can we represent this on the show?” And literally, it was maybe as early as season 5 that I was having a conversation with Daniel about what the final scene would be. I knew it would be at the Crenshaw football field, and I knew it would be Jordan and Spencer. We always had jokes about a reveal that happened in the final scene on the field, and what that might be, and that evolved over time. But after Billy died, every season I kept bringing (the ending) back to Billy needing to be there in some way. He is no longer with these boys, but like many of us who have experienced the loss of a parent, they are always with you. The question then arose: “How can we show that even through all of this, he was still with his boys?”
That’s how we came up with that final moment, and it was all up to me, me calling Taye and saying, “Hey, so I have this idea.” (Laughter) But really, I think this is the quickest “yes” I’ve received in my career, for any request from anyone. I don’t think I completely finished articulating that thought, and he said, “I’m in.”
Gn entert
