The following scene, during the penultimate episode of the ABC family comedy Black-ish, originated last season, when recurring star Laurence Fishburne pitched an idea. “He was like, ‘Hey man, I want to do 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 boil to the surface, forcing them to have a real heart-to-heart 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 breakup, while Dre is experiencing “career ennui” — which was the perfect impetus to explore an idea that Fishburne had pitched in season seven.
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Lilly notes this cutaway scene was omitted from the final episode. “We shot that and then we didn’t use it,” he says, adding that it was original to this episode and not a flashback like later moments in this scene. “The rhythm [of the scene] needed to be genuine.”
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A running joke throughout Black-ish‘s eight seasons is the tough love Dre heaps upon Junior as opposed to his other kids, Zoey, Jack and Diane. “When Laurence pitched the idea, we knew it would happen toward the end of the final season,” Lilly says. It was a moment to find “healing” between these two pairs of fathers and sons, as he notes that Dre and Junior “play out a similar dynamic to the one Dre had with his father.” These moments reiterate, comically, that Dre has always been hardest on Junior.
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“This is the pivotal point where we make it explicit that Dre has raised Junior the way he has,” Lilly says. “He has a methodology for it. He thinks vulnerability is a danger for his son, and his son is at the age to throw that back at him and say, ‘There’s no danger you think you’re protecting me from that’s here right now.’ “
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“There are no jokes in this scene,” says Lilly. “One of the strengths of the show was allowing things to play in a natural rhythm.” Because the episode is leading to the finale, the emotional beats were more vital to perfect. “It’s the emotional finality in a lot of ways for this dynamic [between Dre and Junior].” But Lilly admits he did get to see this episode with a live audience for an FYC event — a rarity for a single-cam sitcom — and recalls that the comic presence of Anderson and Scribner was unavoidable and still brought laughs from the crowd.
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.