In an interview with Deadline, The Crossover creator Kwame Alexander discusses the impact of the series. Alexander is best known as a writer and poet for children’s literature, with works such as The Door of No Return and The Undefeated.
The Disney+ series is based on his 2015 novel of the same name. The sports drama “follows the lives of two teen brothers, Josh and Jordan Bell as they navigate life’s many uncertainties from boyhood to manhood. Though primarily focused on the boy’s relationship with basketball, a sport engrained in them at birth thanks to their former professional basketball-playing father, the series unabashedly tackles serious issues regarding teenage rebellion, self-discovery, disability, and mental health challenges,” via Deadline. Jalyn Hall (Till, All American), Amir O’Neil (Madagascar: A Little Wild, Marlon), and Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher, Glory Road) star as Josh, Jordan, and their father, respectively.
Alexander begins with explaining the significance of the title: “A crossover is a move where a player dribbles the ball with one hand, and the defensive player looks at that ball, and then the player dribbles it quickly to their right hand… it’s really to throw the opponent off balance and get around them. That’s the literal translation of what it means.”
“When I was three years old, my father… would take me to the basketball court as a three-year-old to let me dribble and shoot. One day, he asked me to shoot free throws. And for a three-year-old kid to shoot 12, 14 feet to the basket, there’s no way you’ll be able to get the ball that high. So, this playground supervisor came over, my dad tells me, and tried to lower the goal… And my dad said, ‘He doesn’t know he can’t make the shot.’ That’s always resonated with me; I view it as a metaphor for life. Never let other people try to lower your goals or your expectations. So, basketball, in general, and The Crossover, in particular, they’re metaphors for me with this story. How do you adapt to these things that are happening in your life that you don’t think you have control over or you don’t have control over? How do you stay focused? How do you stay successful? How do you stay sane in the midst of all the chaos that’s happening? And so, when life crosses you over, are you going to fall off balance? Are you going to pick yourself back up? To extend the metaphor even further, how do you rebound?”
Alexander then describes the process for adapting the story from one medium to the other. He says, “I mean, first of all, just because the novel is written in verse, with a lot of concise language, the right words, and a lot of white space, that lent itself pretty well to not being able to say everything in a screenplay. I was able to use some of the poems as almost scene direction because you’re inside the character’s head in the book. And so, when you’re inside the character’s head, what they’re doing, how they’re acting, that’s scene direction. So that worked. And then, just a concise rhythm in the novel’s language, I was able to bring that over into the screenplay. But in terms of format and how to write a screenplay, I got paired with a pretty amazing screenwriter who’s been working in this business for decades, Damani Johnson, and he knew the ins and outs of how to craft a script. So, we kind of got the best of both worlds, and I think we were able to create these scripts with an amazing writing room that bridged the gap between the lyricism and the poetry of the novel and the practicality and the storytelling of a screenplay.”
Later, he admits the challenges that he faced during the production. “It was real work, 14-hour days of real work. And I think what I learned is I’m highly opinionated. I got a lot of opinions, and everybody else does too. I walked a fine line between ‘This is my book. It’s my story that I wrote 15 years ago, that I’ve lived with all these years, that I know intimately, so listen to me because I know. I am the source material.’ It’s the fine line between walking and having that stance and, ‘I got to trust my other EPs. I got to trust the writers in the room.’ And so, how do you walk those two lines and find a way to mesh them together and find that balance? They let me have my vision. They understood and respected that I was the source. I trusted their intellect when it came to creating stories for the screen, which I had never done before. I trusted their vision. And so, we just came and met each other in the middle, as it were, at the half-court line… Teamwork. It’s all about who is the right team around you.”
On a final note, the 54-year-old considers the cultural impact that the series will have on its audience, being one of few family sports shows with Black protagonists: “Much like books, TV shows, and movies are mirrors and they’re windows. They allow us to be able to see ourselves, to see what’s possible for ourselves by viewing this world that we recognize. It can be aspirational. They allow us to see each other, and they allow us to be able to acknowledge and understand each other’s place in the world. And that makes us more connected to each other, which ultimately helps us become more empathetic with each other because we begin to recognize the humanity of not just ourselves and people who look like us or go to church like us or go to school with us. That’s why I think The Crossover is a reminder to Black folks and sort of a wake-up call to the rest of America, to the rest of the world, that Black people live, hope, dream, dance, smile, eat, live just like everybody else. And how important is it for all of us to know and appreciate each other’s humanity? When we appreciate each other, we become better human beings. Ultimately, that’s the goal.”
The Crossover is now streaming on Disney+.