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Synopsis
Rachel reveals a huge secret to Coleman in the aftermath of an incident with Darius. Meanwhile, Quinn attempts to balance her attention between her feelings for John and the chaos on set; and Chet receives attention from an unlikely source.
Promo
There have been far too many examples to run down here, but we recently watched two more examples of black men being shot and killed by cops. You were sitting there knowing that this episode was going to air less than two weeks later, what are the emotions swirling through your heads?
Gertrude Shapiro: I definitely was like, ‘Oh shit.’ And then I hope we got it right because it’s such a crucial issue right now, and I feel really scared to be on the frontlines of it. I also hope that people can have honest conversations about this stuff because it’s so scary to talk about but what we found within our room is that being really honest about these issues helped us make something that we feel proud of and that we feel has integrity.
Jackson: It would have been great for this episode to have been irrelevant by now. It’s hard to think about these real life events in the context of what we want for our show. I wish it was last year’s problem and it felt dated by now.
Lifetime opted to keep this episode on the schedule as planned, and not shelf it as often is done when life suddenly imitates art in this way. Was that the right move in your minds?
Gertrude Shapiro: I believe in the basic integrity of the story in terms of it being carefully thought through. We made an effort, for instance, to write and cast the cop as a rookie who probably hadn’t received a lot of the escalation training and also to have a certain amount of empathy for him. We don’t want to gloss that over or take away responsibility but in the specific scene that we’re depicting, all of the blame lays on Rachel -- for underestimating the situation, for creating the situation, for trying to document the situation to basically impress her boyfriend. Rachel is the asshole in this situation. She put the cop’s life in danger and she put two men’s lives in danger and there’s something in that that I feel has integrity. I also think it’s important that Romeo doesn’t die. I feel like we’d probably be having a different conversation if he did.
Gertrude Shapiro: I definitely was like, ‘Oh shit.’ And then I hope we got it right because it’s such a crucial issue right now, and I feel really scared to be on the frontlines of it. I also hope that people can have honest conversations about this stuff because it’s so scary to talk about but what we found within our room is that being really honest about these issues helped us make something that we feel proud of and that we feel has integrity.
Jackson: It would have been great for this episode to have been irrelevant by now. It’s hard to think about these real life events in the context of what we want for our show. I wish it was last year’s problem and it felt dated by now.
Lifetime opted to keep this episode on the schedule as planned, and not shelf it as often is done when life suddenly imitates art in this way. Was that the right move in your minds?
Gertrude Shapiro: I believe in the basic integrity of the story in terms of it being carefully thought through. We made an effort, for instance, to write and cast the cop as a rookie who probably hadn’t received a lot of the escalation training and also to have a certain amount of empathy for him. We don’t want to gloss that over or take away responsibility but in the specific scene that we’re depicting, all of the blame lays on Rachel -- for underestimating the situation, for creating the situation, for trying to document the situation to basically impress her boyfriend. Rachel is the asshole in this situation. She put the cop’s life in danger and she put two men’s lives in danger and there’s something in that that I feel has integrity. I also think it’s important that Romeo doesn’t die. I feel like we’d probably be having a different conversation if he did.
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