The next scene, during the penultimate episode of the ABC family comedy: black, emerged last season, when returning star Laurence Fishburne pitched an idea. “He said, ‘Hey man, I want to make an episode about why it’s so hard for black men of certain generations to say they love each other,'” recalls showrunner Courtney Lilly. The episode sees three of the Johnson men—Anthony Anderson’s Dre, Marcus Scribner’s Junior, and Fishburne’s Pops—on a camping trip, where simmering feelings come to the surface, forcing them to speak honestly about their emotions.
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Lilly says this moment sees both Anthony Anderson’s Dre and Marcus Scribner’s Junior in “a vulnerable spot”: Junior is going through a rift, while Dre is experiencing “career ennui” — which was the perfect trigger for exploring an idea that Fishburne had thrown in season seven.
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Lilly notes that this cutaway scene has been omitted from the last episode. “We shot that and then we didn’t use it,” he says, adding that it was original for this episode and not a flashback like later in this scene. “The rhythm [of the scene] had to be real.”
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A running joke everywhere black isEight Seasons is the hard love Dre hopes for Junior, unlike his other children, Zoey, Jack and Diane. “When Laurence presented the idea, we knew it would happen towards the end of the final season,” says Lilly. It was a moment to find “healing” between these two pairs of fathers and sons, as he notes that Dre and Junior “have a similar dynamic to the one Dre had with his father.” These moments repeat, comically, that Dre has always been the hardest thing for Junior.
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“This is the crucial point where we make it explicit that Dre raised Junior the way he did,” says Lilly. “He has a method for it. He thinks vulnerability is a danger to his son, and his son is of age to throw that back at him and say, “There’s no danger that you think will protect me from that, it’s here now.” †
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“There are no jokes in this scene,” Lilly says. “One of the strengths of the show was to let things play in a natural rhythm.” As the episode leads into the finale, the emotional beats were more important to perfect. “It’s the emotional finality for this dynamic in many ways [between Dre and Junior]† But Lilly admits seeing this episode with a live audience for an FYC event — a rarity for a single-camera sitcom — and recalls that the comedic presence of Anderson and Scribner was inevitable and still fueled the crowd. brought laughter.
This story first appeared in a standalone June issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.