Editor’s note: This Emmy Season Preview sets the stage for SHOOT’s 16-part weekly The Road To Emmy Series of feature stories which starts next Friday (5/12). This week we shed light on the limited series A League of Their Own (Prime Video) and Daisy Jones & The Six (Prime Video) as well as the docuseries Boys in Blue (Showtime).
For many, A League of Their Own is in a league of its own as a movie. The beloved Penny Marshall-directed 1992 release--which took us back to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and its women ballplayers of the 1940s--was a favorite of writer-director-producer Will Graham and writer-producer-actor Abbi Jacobson. Graham thought it would be sacrilege to remake the film but when he and Jacobson began exploring the possibility of a TV series based on it, they found a narrative promise and purpose that needed to be realized. Such a series, reasoned co-creators Graham and Jacobson, would be an opportunity to play extra innings and delve more deeply into other aspects such as queer players, segregation, realities of urban life, and the marginalization of Black talent--a serious drama that would keep the humor and heartwarming spirit of the original feature.
Graham said that when he and Jacobson began to look into the real stories behind Marshall’s film, they realized what a series could do--diving into subject matter that couldn’t be so easily tackled in a feature made 30-plus years ago. Plus, a limited series wouldn’t be limited so much by time, no longer confined within a two-hour movie format.
Thus the TV/streaming series A League of Their Own was born, able to tell what Graham described “as a bigger generational story,” reflecting “a moment in time where the rules sort of changed, women were moving into different roles--queer women in particular were able to find each other and able to build community in a way they hadn’t been able to before.”
The series also opened up another social reality that had only been touched on in the movie, introducing us to Maxine “Max” Chapman (portrayed by Chanté Adams) who wows everyone at an open tryout with her pitching arm. But because Chapman is Black, she is not allowed to compete. The series follows her over the course of the season as she strives to play the sport she loves. This expands greatly upon the feature film in which an unnamed Black woman with a once-in-a-lifetime arm is seen briefly but not heard from again.
That brief appearance of that character was Marshall’s nod to the injustice of the time, according to Graham who learned that when he and Jacobson had spoken to Marshall (who died in 2018 at the age of 75). The TV/streaming show provided the chance to pursue and do justice to that important story, rooted in research centered on ballplayers such as Toni Stone, Connie Morgan and Mamie Johnson who blazed a trail for women in the Negro Leagues.
While Stone, Morgan and Johnson’s stories had been written about in varied accounts, there were other groundbreaking players in real life--contributors to women’s history and queer history whom people hadn’t heard of, whose lives and accomplishments were “not collected in a single book or document anywhere,” said Graham. Their stories, he continued, included those who today would be known as nonbinary or trans, who faced great hardship but found a way to realize their dreams, to do what they loved, underscoring that “joy has a transformative power.” A prime challenge posed by A League of Their Own, explained Graham, was maintaining the “balance of being realistic about the hard parts of their journey without losing that sense of joy.” And that joy, he observed, keeps with the spirit of Marshall’s film.
The series expands the realm of characters from that film. In addition to Chapman, that ensemble of new characters includes Carson Haw (portrayed by Jacobson), a married catcher from Idaho; Lupe Garcia (Roberta Colindrez, the team’s star pitcher); and Joe Deluca (Melanie Field) and Greta Gill (D’Arcy Carden), best friends from NYC. Also in the mix is Clance Morgan (Gbemisola Ikumelo), an aspiring comic book artist who is Chapman’s close friend. (For her portrayal of Morgan, Ikumelo earned a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination this year for Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series.)
Directing the first three episodes was Jamie Babbit, whom Graham had long admired. Babbit’s storytelling as well as comedic acumen are evident in a body of work which includes But I’m a Cheerleader, a romantic comedy starring Natasha Lyonne and Michelle Williams which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival; Itty Bitty Titty Committee which took Best Feature Film honors at the South by Southwest Film Festival; a return to SXSW with her Addicted to Fresno; episodic directing for the likes of Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Russian Doll, United States of Tara, Girls, Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens; and Emmy-nominated turns for comedy series directing on Silicon Valley and Only Murders in the Building.
A League of Their Own marked Graham’s first collaboration with Babbit who has since become a close friend. He referred to her as “a queer icon” whose work told stories of queer characters “way before people were doing it.” Graham added that Babbit’s grandmother was a closeted lesbian during the era of A League of Their Own. “Jamie brought that personal connection to the story,” related Graham who described the director as “a spitfire, intense, hard charging, hilarious, tough, wonderful and emotional. She reminded me and Abbi so much of the women we had spoken to who had played in the [baseball] league. She has that spirit and sensibility.”
That spirit and sensibility have had a profound impact on Graham. “For me and almost everyone involved, this show in a lot of ways has been life changing,” he shared. “As a queer person, getting to celebrate these joyful stories means a lot.” He added that going back in time affirms a sense of “where we have always been,” observing that for the gay and trans community, “the world is not set up for us. We’ve had to find out how to work around that or work through that as we try to do the things we want, to fall in love with the people we want to fall in love with. So much has changed and at the same time so much really hasn’t--as evidenced by Don’t Say Gay legislation, anti-trans and anti-gay bills. You get a real sense of inspiration and strength to understand these women, these people who had fought for their dreams, who had become trailblazers without ever meaning to. They just wanted to play baseball. They connected me to my own history in a very joyful way.”
Graham has more than A League of Their Own as a source of joy this current awards season. He also served as an executive producer, director and writer on the musical drama Daisy Jones & The Six, which centers on a rock band in the 1970s fronted by two charismatic lead singers: Daisy Jones (portrayed by Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) who have palpable onstage chemistry and a tumultuous behind-the-scenes relationship. The 10-episode series, based on the best-selling book of the same title by Taylor Jenkins Reid, chronicles a high-profile rock band’s skyrocket-like ascent to fame and then its precipitous fall.
Graham observed that like A League of Their Own, Daisy Jones & The Six is “an incredible journey. I pinch myself that we got to do it. I’m drawn to stories of people who care about something more than they care about themselves. That’s why I often wind up writing about [sports] teams and bands.”
In the case of Daisy Jones & The Six, Graham described the story as “people finding each other and finding a way to approach the emptiness in themselves through music.” (In that this is an Emmy Preview piece, look for more on Daisy Jones & The Six from the perspective of other contributors in upcoming installments of SHOOT's The Road To Emmy coverage.)
Peter Berg
From heartwarming to heartbreaking--that’s the vast emotional range captured in the four-part docuseries Boys in Blue, directed by Peter Berg. The humanity, tragedy and triumph of real-life characters makes an indelible impression as Berg delves into North Community High School and its Polars football team in North Minneapolis during the 2021 season with players coming of age in the aftermath of the nearby brutal killing of George Floyd by police officers.
While Floyd’s murder impacted the world, fueling the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for social justice and police reform, Boys in Blue takes an unexpected turn with the story of another gut-wrenching killing--that of 15-year-old Deshaun Hill Jr., a star quarterback and honor roll student at North High whom viewers of Boys in Blue had come to root for on and off the football field. We learn in the tail end of the series that the youngster was randomly gunned down in broad daylight on February 9, 2022, by a man nearly twice his age with a violent criminal history. Hill had walked by the man; they brushed shoulders and the youngster was shot three times in the back of the head. Hill had been walking to a bus stop and in a fleeting moment was deprived of a promising future, leaving a family and community in mourning.
At the same time, Boys in Blue shows the resiliency of a small town even in the face of overwhelming adversity. There’s hope to be found in the football team itself, consisting of mostly Black student-athletes who are coached and mentored by members of the Minneapolis Police Department. Also unfolding in the series is a thoughtful exploration of a defunding the police ballot initiative as those in favor and those opposed articulate their stances. All the while the North Community High School players are concerned for their coaches’ safety and job security on the gridiron sideline. If the ballot measure passes that would replace many police officers with a more nuanced public safety department, the mentor/coaches might have to seek employment elsewhere, jeopardizing a positive bond that has evolved them and the youngsters.
Berg’s experience years ago in Minnesota had a hand in drawing him to the story. A theater major at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. in the late 1980s, Berg had fond recollections of that place and time in terms of the racial harmony, tolerance and fostering of artists he saw and felt there. Fast forward 40-plus years and Berg was horrified to hear of the Floyd murder. “It’s not the place I had remembered--back when Prince was just coming out and there was a real feeling of diversity, music, love. It was a very happy place. I was kind of blown away that this [Floyd’s murder] had happened in the Twin Cities.”
Berg sought answers as to why and how things changed there. “I felt I had to do something.” At first, he considered following up on a story he heard that Floyd and Derek Chauvin, the police officer convicted of murdering Floyd, had at one time worked together at a nightclub. Berg contemplated producing a documentary that tracked their lives from that point to the moment of their fatal interaction. But then Berg read a New York Times article about a high school football team in North Minneapolis with cop coaches. Well versed in sports stories as evidenced by such work at Friday Night Lights--for which he earned two Emmy nominations (Outstanding Drama Series and Directing for a Drama Series)--Berg saw this as a way into the Twin Cities to help shed some light on the community and those who lived there.
First came the work that needed to be done to build trust among team players, coaches and their families in Berg and his crew. Berg related,“I’ve done several films--scripted and unscripted--based on real events, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day, Lone Survivor. In all of those films I’ve had to go into communities and say ‘this is who I am, this is the kind of work I’ve done, this is what I would like to do. I would like to try to tell your story. I don’t know where it’s going to go, what it’s going to be. I will do my best to capture the truth of your lives and to do that with respect.’”
In the case of Boys in Blue, Berg made several trips to Minneapolis to have conversations with the subjects, including head coach Charles Adams, a former officer in the Minneapolis police department, as well as current Minneapolis PD members who are on the football team’s coaching staff. Coach Adams introduced Berg to players, families, members of the school board in what was a slow process to develop trust and understanding among all parties well before filming began.
This laid the foundation for Berg to reflect the truth of these people, who they are, what they cope with, their concerns, triumphs and setbacks. It’s a crime-stricken community but also still a place where love and positive determination exist.
The football team is evidence of how youngsters fearful of the police can come together with coaches who have law enforcement ties. There’s a teamwork that is part of the beauty of sports, observed Berg, noting that “football is an incredibly complex, nuanced phenomenon--22 people on a field at the same time performing at a highly synchronized level. Discipline, effort and talent surrounds sports, particularly team sports--you see the inner workings and the coordination and brotherhood or sisterhood on a team. It’s fascinating on its own. Then you look beyond the playing of the sport, the communities, cultures and families that attach themselves to these sports--their players, family members--and it becomes a truly religious experience...a deeply rich experience.”
That North Minneapolis community, though, ends up devastated with the killing of Hill that occurred when the crew was in the midst of the last week of lensing for the docuseries. “When Deshaun was murdered, the complexities and realities of poverty in this country hit me in a way that they just never had before,” related Berg. “We have a system that is designed to keep people poor, to keep people in danger. We don’t have an easy answer for it on a macro level. Poverty is very real, a problem without an answer. We truly have a brutal system in this country in which the poor remain poor with very little future.”
Among the improbable longshot ways out is a pro football career which requires great talent, strong family support, mentoring and instruction from caring coaches. And Hill had all that going for him as he aspired to a career in the NFL. “He did everything right,” said Berg. “He was an honor roll student, an incredible quarterback running an elite high school program. And he was murdered for no reason other than he was in a bad neighborhood and poor. It’s humbling.
“That was probably the most tangible thing I took from this, a deeper understanding of how problematic and real poverty is,” continued Berg who captured Hill at his best in Boys in Blue as we see his success on the field, his sense of humor, scenes of him going out to dinner with his girlfriend, loving his sisters, connecting with his coaches, including Adams and offensive coordinator Rick Plunkett. The docuseries connects us with a special young man, which makes his loss all the more painful and impactful for viewers.
Boys in Blue adds to a body of work for Berg which spans features, documentaries, scripted and unscripted television, corporate identity films and commercials. Further, he aspires to one day produce a Broadway show. Among his credits in the advertising arena is a Super Bowl spot in 2020 for Microsoft which profiled Katie Sowers, the first female coach for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. Sowers that year became the first woman coach in the Super Bowl, serving as assistant offensive coach for the 49ers. The Big Game commercial--produced by Film 47, Berg’s spotmaking/branded entertainment production company, for agency McCann New York--reflects a theme, the transformational power of sports, that the director has deftly explored and shared with audiences over the years.
SHOOT’s weekly 16-part The Road To Emmy Series of feature stories gets underway on May 12. Nominations will be announced and covered on July 12. Coverage of the Creative Arts Emmy winners will appear on September 9 and 10, and primetime Emmy ceremony winners will be covered on September 18.