Is there a formula for keeping a young adult series thriving seven years into its on-air run? Ask All American showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll, and she’ll say the key is to go back to your roots — and lean into the core ethos of what started it all.
In October of 2018 The CW debuted All American, a YA sports drama following Spencer James (played by Daniel Ezra), a high school footballer from Crenshaw whose talents take him to the other side of the tracks at Beverly Hills High School. Over the last six seasons we’ve watched Spencer chase his NFL dreams alongside his tight-knit group of friends, dealing with real-world issues like gun violence and racism, as well as your regular dose of soapy teen drama. Audiences have watched the main crew, Spencer, Coop (Bre-Z), Layla Keating (Greta Onieogou), and siblings Olivia (Samantha Logan) and Jordan Baker (Michael Evans Behling) all become adults on the show.
With season 7's arrival — and Ezra and Logan’s departure as series regulars — we’re starting a new chapter with new characters and new storylines, but with all of the same grit and spirit. Ahead of the season premiere on Monday, February 3 at 8 p.m. ET, Teen Vogue visited the All American set to get an exclusive first look at season 7, chat with Okoro Carroll, and check in on some of the new and returning cast members.
“I keep calling 701 a pilot because it feels like it has the same heart of the previous seasons of All American, but it's got a new energy, new flavor, new juice,” Okoro Carroll exclusively tells Teen Vogue. “Everyone keeps mocking me here because they're like, ‘It's a premiere.’ And I'm like, ‘Right, the premiere, not the pilot.’”
“I knew I wanted to take it back to high school,” she continues. “At the end of the day, the heart of the show is sort of the pursuit of what some would call the ‘unrealistic dream for our Black youth.’ And Spencer achieved that. His dream was the unrealistic goal of making it to the NFL and he pulled it off. We got to take that amazing journey with him. So I was like, ‘Well, how do I keep that going but take it back to the heart of the show?’ That was why I wanted to take it back to the original high schools, back to the original rivalry, and usher in a new generation.”
That new generation will include actors Nathaniel McIntyre, Osy Ikhile, Antonio J. Bell, and Alexis Chikaeze. McIntyre plays the show’s new lead KJ, Beverly’s newly transferred quarterback. Joining him at Beverly is his father, Coach Cassius, portrayed by Ikhile. Bell and Chikaeze play Khalil and Amina, respectively, two recurring characters from season 6 who have been upgraded to the main cast.
While visiting the set, which is on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, Bell and McIntyre were filming a scene from episode four at The Hangout, the notable third space for the Beverly Hills teens in the show. “It's like looking into a mirror that goes to your past,” Michael Evans Behling says of seeing a new crop of kids populate the restaurant and make it their own.
You can feel the excitement oozing off of Bell and McIntyre while on set; there’s a juvenile joy in the air between each take. They’re having the time of their lives. But best believe, they are not taking this opportunity lightly; they both understand the honor it is to join such a longstanding Black production.
“We've lost Snowfall, and Power Book II: Ghost [just ended],” Bell says, “So for me, this is one of those last classic Black [dramas], which I'm just so grateful to be here for. I think all of the cast, especially the newcomers, we know the responsibility. This is a beloved show. So we come in every day and we're trying to do great work, because we know the shoes that we're filling are pretty big.”
This level of commitment is exactly why Okoro Carroll was so particular about finding her new leading man, who she found in McIntyre. “I was looking for a new hero that we could really root for whose dream we could believe in as much as we wanted Spencer's dream for him,” she says.
“Nathaniel McIntyre, he's a star,” she continues. “And in addition to his killer, thousand-watt smile, he’s just a really great actor, a really hard worker. He had that special something where I'm like, ‘I'm rooting for you already, and I barely know you, and I'm writing these characters.’ I literally sat there in his audition and I just kept writing down on my pad, ‘I'm rooting for him, I'm rooting for him,’ which was the thing we were looking for.”
This is McIntyre’s first big role, and it’s the moment he’s been waiting for. “I think one of my biggest goals as an actor is to inspire people who look like me,” he says. “Telling these stories, to learn from these characters because they're real characters who go through real struggles concerning our people. I would've never imagined I would be on All American, this awesome show, and to be a lead at that. So I just hope [people are] inspired by this.”
The family drama All American has consistently delivered will surely still be sprinkled throughout season 7; as we meet McIntyre’s KJ, we’re also introduced to his father Coach Cassius. Showrunner Jamie Turner says Cassius, a young father, is a new type of character for the show to explore, presenting a new father-son dynamic that KJ and Cassius will struggle with as the season progresses. And while he can’t give too much away, Ikhile says there will be an important storyline between his character and the Bakers.
“There is also a deeper kind of rivalry, [a] personal rivalry for Cassius and the whole Baker family that will be explored later on that I'm not going to talk about because like I said, I just got this job, I ain't trying to get fired right now,” Ikhile says with a laugh. “There are a lot more layers to the rivalry than just what you’ll first see on the surface.”
For Bell and Chikaeze, being upped to series regulars is a natural expansion of their season 6 arcs and nothing short of a dream come true.
“Khalil is a marriage between some other beloved characters,” Bell, who had been auditioning for the series since season 1, says of his role. “Like a Shawn, or even a Spencer in some ways. For Khalil, we're going back to Crenshaw. It's a football love story and Khalil's telling his tale of a Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, if you will, where he's caught between his past and his father's history in the streets, and then also trying to make a future for himself.”
In season 7, Khalil is taken under the wings of the adored Jordan Baker, the now-assistant coach at Crenshaw High School, a storyline Michael Evans Behling is excited about. Throughout the entire series thus far, his character has been steadily evolving; from trying to find his light in Spencer’s shadow while chasing the respect of his father Billy Baker (played by Taye Diggs), to confronting those emotions head-on after his father’s untimely death in season 5. Jordan is now the Baker man, the new man of his household and a provider for his family — something that will be further explored in season 7 as he takes on a coaching role similar to the one his father once held.
“You're going to see a lot of Billy in Jordan… [the] good, bad, and ugly,” Behling says, especially as Jordan becomes a coach. “Taye is missed, and I think that Billy is missed as well. So I'm hoping that fans and viewers will enjoy seeing the same Jordan they all know, but in this new light.”
Chikaeze's character, Amina, has existed on the show for several seasons in different ways. She’s the daughter of Preach, Coop’s longtime friend. But now that she’s a teenager, going to high school with the other main characters, she’s getting to explore new family dynamics as well as new love interests.
“I really think that everyone brings something so different and lovely to the table, that [then] brings different things out of Amina,” Chikaeze says. “With Coop, that's been her protector, somewhat in place of that mother role, alongside Layla — they both fill that role for her, even her uncle Jordan. Spencer's not here, so he steps up [in] that role this season.”
In season 6, Coop finds out that she’s been accepted into law school. Many of the returning OG characters are now fully stepping into more adult roles on the show, a transition they’ve all enjoyed.
“Playing Coop for me personally has always oddly aligned in some way with my real life,” Bre-Z says. “I’m happy with how much she’s grown, and more than anything honored that my input is received and respected with my executives, my showrunners, as well as our writers. The reward in all this has been the response from the public towards Coop. I have come across, I’d say at least one person from every single walk of life who found something to appreciate about my character and about me personally, with the work I’ve been able to do with Coop. That to me makes the job worth it. It makes me feel purpose, and it lets me know that my work is reaching who it’s meant to.”
In this upcoming season, Coop’s character will finally start settling into a routine after a tumultuous few years of ups-and-downs — on the other hand, Layla is trying to find her way after accomplishing so much at such a young age.
“Season 7 [is] a lot about Layla settling into newlywed life and really enjoying that,” Onieogou says about her character’s season 6 marriage to Jordan Baker. “But at the same time, there's a lot of challenges she's facing in terms of feeling like maybe she's peaked early… feeling a bit lost and directionless. Especially when you have other friends in your friend group who are all accomplishing and pursuing new dreams. I think it can feel a little bit difficult in some ways to feel like you're left behind and not really know what there is really left for you to do."
The show’s creators and writers want to continue to lean into such realistic and relatable themes, as they never want fans to lose out on the reasons they first started watching All American in the first place: to see themselves reflected.
“I think that's been one of the biggest challenges of a long running series,” Okoro Carroll says. “It’s staying true to the growth and maturity of these characters as they grow up, while still trying to honor what it is about them that the fandom loves.”
Achieving a seventh season, with over 100 episodes aired in total, is a huge feat, one that feels even more important as a Black network series with a majority Black cast, almost exclusively focused on telling Black stories. All American is still standing, and for the team behind it, seeing this show overcome every obstacle after obstacle is something that sparks massive gratitude.
“Beyond the impact that [All American] has on the culture, beyond the impact that it has on our fan base as a whole… we are [simply] fortunate to be here,” Turner says. “We've been together and we weathered the pandemic, we weathered two strikes. We lost Kobe, we lost Nip, all of these L.A. icons, not to mention all the [Black] icons in general that we lost in just the last six, seven months across the board. We've been here through it all.”
Catch a special sneak peek of All American season 7 on Wednesday, January 29 at 8 p.m. ET before the season premieres in its regular time slot on Monday, February 3 at 8 p.m. ET.
