Why am I here?
You're the only one who can handle me.
And I'm the only one who can handle you.
You're trying do this on the ground.
[kissing]
I know.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures.
[music]
(SINGING) Where do we go from here?
Hour Six is called "The Fire This Time."
And one of the things that we really love about it
is that the community is in a state of emergency.
But all of our characters are in a state of emergency.
I mean, even particularly with Ashe,
she's going through this custody battle
while she's still trying to be the lead investigator
on this case.
One of the things I was so attracted to in this character
is, as an actor, we want to do flawed characters.
That's fun.
Yeah, we want to be fully human.
Right?
Yeah, we want to be fully human.
And by nature of being human, you are
flawed, period, end of story.
I don't care what anybody tries to pretend.
And she's flawed.
And I loved that about her.
And I loved that it's her passion and her relentlessness
in staying in her daughter's life
and being a mother that will make her do anything.
And you know what?
That wasn't noble?
It's interesting because what we talked to you
about is Ashe a good mother.
Yeah, she absolutely loves her daughter.
But some of the things that Ashe does, is she a good mother?
Yeah.
Well, I think that it's a work in progress,
probably like many mothers.
I'm a mother to a four-legged bulldog.
[laughter]
And I know that just from speaking to mothers,
it's never perfect.
You never know-- yeah.
Its like, what is the definition of a good mother?
Exactly.
What mother on Earth has cracked
the code on what motherhood is.
Yeah, and defined it as good.
Essentially, it's that child.
And if that's the definition, by all means,
this child is beautiful and good.
And so therefore-- - Yeah.
I think the other very interesting thing
is what's happening with Beck.
Talk about a personal crisis.
He's got his badge taken away.
And then we just have this amazing scene
between Preston and Beck.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and fight back.
No.
I'm supposed to just take it no matter how much it hurts.
First off, with everything that's
going on with Beck at the time, with him losing his job--
they take his badge.
They take his gun from him, and expect
him to just live with it.
But the audience actually gets a chance
to go home and see how he deals with it,
or whether it's well or not so well.
And you see that he's not really in a good place with it.
He's drinking his sorrows away in front of his kids,
which is something that they don't do.
That's not in their nature.
But it's the crutch that he's looking for.
Everything around him is collapsing.
So that scene between Preston and Beck,
you get a chance to, in a sense, kind of see somebody
trying to lift somebody up.
And so he kind of just is defeated while Preston is still
trying to solve this case.
I feel so conflicted.
And then you see this sort of very
intimate, transparent conversation
between these two black men.
And it makes you think of all black men in the world
and all the layers that we're not able to see
and that we don't see.
We gave Pastor Janae some speeches in Hour Six.
And really, props to Jeff Stetson, who wrote Hour Six.
And I think we should just talk a little bit about how Pastor
Janae begins this hour wanting to create this revolution,
wanting to create a riot of ideas.
Honestly, this was the one episode that I received,
and I was grappling with it.
I was grappling with it, so much so
that I had to go back and read Jeff Stetson's play because I
wanted to understand his voice.
I wanted to understand his point of view.
And his play talks about this fictitious meeting
between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
And that is exactly what the voice of this speech was.
It was the "by any means necessary" meets peace.
And so trying to find a space for Pastor Janae
to say one thing, but say both these things
in the same place-- because at this point,
she's wanting to harness the energy of the community.
If we have no other choice to speak to power and power
has neither the desire nor the will to listen,
then Dr. King's words will no longer be a warning.
She wants to sort of speak to that sweet spot that lies
between complacency and chaos and try
to find what we can do to take action
so that we're not complacent.
But she certainly wasn't trying to gear it towards chaos.
And ultimately, we find that here we are now, watching
probably one of the most chilling visuals
that you could ever imagine, a tank coming
at a child in a community.
It was quite riveting.
Well, again, just in terms of everybody being in a state
of emergency.
The governor has all this pressure of making sure nothing
is going to happen.
And then she finally concedes and allows the community
to become militarized.
And the tank and all the dudes in riot gear come in.
And instead of quieting everybody down,
it just escalates.
We see-- when a riot or uprising pops off,
you see it on the news.
But we wanted to get in and let an audience
understand and empathize.
I mean, what does it feel like when, as you said,
the child is standing there, it's in your community,
and suddenly, tanks are coming through as if you're the enemy,
what that feels like?
One of my favorite things about that moment
and Pastor Janae is her running towards the danger.
And I feel like one of her most consistent elements
is that throughout every hour, we find that fearlessness
among some of the ambiguity.
It's very consistent.
I love that.
It's a fearlessness.
But it's very reminiscent of the mother in a sense.
This is your town.
And you've become the leader and the mother of it.
So there's a certain nurturing that you do for the town,
but also, how a mother is.
If there's anything going on with her baby,
she's going to make sure it happens.
I know my mama would have ran after me like that.
I think Pastor Janae has definitely developed
that kind of relationship, just her investment
in these mothers.
And I think that it definitely began with the community,
of her sort of adopting them into a space in her spirit
that should anything threaten their lives
that instinctually, she's going to run towards that thing.
And so I think when the conversation of these mothers
came up, though she's not a mother,
I think she sort of connects in that place
to try to empathize as much as she can.
[singing call and response]
Your boy is out there.
Where he at?
(SINGING) --today.
I will not be afraid.
One of the most consistent and moving things I found with
the mothers in the movement was that post-traumatic
fear when they had other kids.
Lesley McSpadden wrote about it in her book,
"Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil"
of like how she wouldn't even let her kids go
to school afterwards.
There's a real sense of protectiveness
that just obviously instinctively
goes on, like, high alert.
And it was so crazy watching it because I feel like the kind
of intellectual understanding of that,
there's no measure for being in that environment.
And everything that you all constructed
and Jonathan Demme orchestrated.
There's a tank behind me.
I couldn't see anything.
There is explosions.
There's people yelling, and there are signs.
And it just had that kind of energy and spirit.
And by that point, because we shot in sequence,
Kylen is the homie.
Kylen plays Shawn.
Yeah, her son.
So seeing him manhandled by these two large police
officers, for lack of a better phrase,
it just made it very easy to be in the moment.
Yeah, Jonathan Demme definitely created
a space for controlled chaos.
What he felt, like, his style--
sometimes it was even frustrating as an actor,
because you're like, what, what are we doing now?
Oh, yeah, that's seeing it, actually.
Can you tell me--
I feel like we didn't shoot until 5:30.
It was such high emotions.
So you're trying to like, should I hold it now?
Or do I do--
[laughs] Is the camera on me?
I was watching DeWanda the whole day by btdub.
And she was like, it's going to be there.
So you don't have to tell me what we're shooting
now, because he created--
we were so confused.
But it served the purpose.
And it wasn't until after that I was like, oh.
Well, one of the things that we loved about bringing
Jonathan Demme on to direct Hour Six, one of the first things
is--
it's really cool.
He never called it a riot.
He always called it an uprising.
And just the fact that he came in,
and it was, like, already a level of consciousness.
With his PJs.
That's right.
Rocking his PJ's on set.
It was really amazing because I mean,
he's not necessarily a spring chicken.
But the dude had so much energy.
Like, he was like 19 years old.
Yeah.
We had so many amazing directors on this,
starting with Reggie and Gina.
Right?
It was kind of like a dream group of directors.
And I thought to myself, I love his work.
I'm such a huge fan of his work.
I wonder how it will be different with him.
Will you be able to tell that he is one of the greatest?
And let me tell you something.
The first hour on set, the crew, I mean, the crew and the cast,
everybody was like, whoa.
It was like he was a magician.
You know what I mean?
You should call him magician all the time.
Yeah, he was like a magician because it was almost like
that scene with the chaos, was he aware that he
was creating that?
I feel like there's something so inspired.
We rarely get to be around other directors.
But I made a point to be on set just to learn and watch him.
And even watching the dailies, I would
watch him to listen to how he was directing you guys.
And it was fascinating.
And he would be at the monitor going, mm, mm.
Yeah.
You would be in a scene, and you'd hear him go, mm.
[laughter]
He was so--
go ahead.
I can't top that.
So this was, like, before Gina and I
were dating when there was an uprising
over the Rodney King verdict.
Right?
When nobody was going down for it.
I didn't know where to go, what to do.
I got in my car, and I went to a First AME Church.
And just by coincidence, Gina was there.
And it was like so crazy.
And I guess that wasn't a coincidence.
But we didn't plan it.
It wasn't premeditated.
And I always remembered one of the leaders
there had said-- like, everybody is upset and distraught.
And one of the leaders said, go home and read a book.
And it always stayed with me because like,
that's the last thing that was going to happen.
But it was really interesting to just talk about that
and bring us back to that moment.
It just really felt like you and I came full circle.
My mom's dead.
You--
[grunting]
[shouting]
Give me another shot!
No!
I feel like Shameeka is a quiet storm.
And Hour Six is where it roars.
And there's something beautiful about that moment.
You know, I say it all the time.
We don't get to see the mothers outside of a talk
show or a news broadcast.
But that is it.
Right?
That moment, that cry, that cry is a daily cry.
Yeah, and we called it "The Fire This Time,"
because really, everybody's in turmoil.
We don't know now what's going to happen Shawn.
Is Beck guilty?
Is he not guilty?
And whether he's guilty or not, what's
he going to do if the police department
is turning their back on him?
And is he going to turn his back on everybody?
And what is going to happen from Pastor Janae's leadership?
And it's certainly just that inner turmoil
between Ashe and Preston.
And just as important as the case,
is Ashe going to get her kid? - Right.
Yeah.
And if she doesn't, what is going to happen given
who Ashe is and where her head is
at and what she's been through?
Thanks for joining us for our Hour Six roundtable discussion.
And keep the conversation going, hashtag, #ShotsFired.
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