John Ridley is no stranger to the complicated. A complex and critical thinker, his middle name should probably be "Profound." Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "12 Years a Slave," returned to television as the series creator and executive producer of "American Crime." Known for tackling difficult topics, the show's second season examines the sexual assault of a high school boy by members of the boys' basketball team. We're just two episodes in, and the show is already examining race, class, homophobia and gender.
I caught up with Ridley to discuss the show, basketball and our shared connection to Indiana.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Barnes: How did you develop the storyline for this season?
Ridley: When Michael McDonald, the other producer, and myself had an inkling that we may have an opportunity to have a second season, we started with what were perspectives, ideas, points of view, characters, that we didn't have the opportunity to either present or deal with in the first season. We wanted to look at socioeconomic issues, issues of [sexual] orientation, education, spaces that we create for our children, the choices that they make. We wanted to look at families more strongly. Last year, a lot of our storytelling was about the dissolution of family, and this year we see families coming together very strongly, but often times in opposition of other individuals.
There's obviously a good deal of conversation about sexual assault on campuses. We read stories, and not just sports stories, met with a number of individuals, and were really shocked by the numbers and the lack of reporting, the lack of adjudication, the complications in communities as they dealt with it. We thought [sexual assault against men] was an area within an element of our society that is not dealing very well with sexual assault when it happens on our campuses and within our communities.
Barnes: What was really interesting in what you said was that "this isn't just about sports," and yet you arrived at sports, and in particular a boys' basketball team. How did you get there and what drew you specifically to that line of inquiry as opposed to what is typically being discussed regarding sexual assault?
Ridley: In terms of what is typically being discussed, I think people are making an effort. As far as sexual assault goes, any crime -- or more importantly, the cascade of sex or how it affects communities -- we're not discussing it enough. Often, crime is just used as a plot point within episodic television. It's not as though we're talking about this instead of talking about women. We're talking about something that happens. There was an incident just over the New Year's break with a basketball team in Tennessee. There was an alleged sexual assault by the players towards another player, and the [season] got shut down because they were concerned the school was covering it up. There were similar incidents in Colorado and Carmel, Indiana.
It happens, and it's not for us to say, "Well this murder happened over here and if we're talking about a different one we give more or less value to the incident or the circumstance or the geography." We want to talk about things that are happening.
Barnes: What drew you to basketball, as opposed to football, which is another cultural hallmark of masculinity in our society?
Ridley: Certainly in football, basketball, [or] anything that involves a group of men, there's a certain mindset about winning, achieving and rolling over your opponent. In the hands of a good coach and a good program, those can be incredibly powerful things. Like anything else, it is about the philosophy that is presented. Once we decided on the geography of Indiana, basketball is a big-time sport there.
In terms of what [Indiana] represents socioeconomically, one of the things we wanted to get into was a young, black basketball player from a well-to-do family. I think there is a presumption that when we see men of color play basketball, that is their way out of difficult circumstances, and we wanted to subvert that a little bit. [Kevin LaCroix] plays ball, he's really good at ball, and he's also a straight-A student and can afford to go to college should he not get a scholarship.
We thought [this season] represented the state and the city where it was set well, and a certain culture that at times grows around young men in athletics. We also thought it represented elements of race and class. People often come with a presupposition as opposed to seeing an individual as an individual.
Barnes: I'm actually from Indiana.
Ridley: I will say this: My parents are from Indiana, and I went to school in Indiana, so I wasn't picking on Indiana. [Laughs]
Barnes: When I watched the first episode, I had this moment when I realized this was set in Indiana and I freaked out about it. Also being a person of color who went to a boarding school in northern Indiana, Kevin LaCroix's story and the discussions that were happening in that family really resonated with me as a viewer, and also as a critic, which I thought was really cool.
Ridley: That's really good to know! Someone like yourself who is very close to those circumstances, there was a level of honesty in what we were trying to portray. That's certainly something that we work toward, but we don't want something that feels arbitrary. It certainly is [fiction], but we like to believe that the research we do, the people we talk to, the effort that we make to set the show in a specific space, that there is a certain sense of reality that comes with it.
Barnes: Thinking about how "American Crime" delves into these deep topics and parses through many layers, what are you hoping that people, especially sports fans, are going to take away from this season?
Ridley: My desire largely is that hopefully it's not just limited to sports fans. We all have skin in the game of not just athletics, but the spaces we provide for our kids. ["American Crime" is] not meant to be an indictment of sports. This could happen in any community group, in any gathering of people, at any age level, certainly young people.
What we do not want to do with "American Crime" is pretend to have all the answers, to try to present answers to folks, to preach or to proselytize, but to say that these incidents are happening. If [viewers] can engage at a higher level because relate to the elements of family or relate to a moment -- like a mother saying to her son on the drive home after they win the game, "Well that's all well and good, but you should have taken the shot," -- then I hope we can provide a space where we can see ourselves in others and do a better job of realizing that things like this don't just happen to other people.
We can't allow a system because of shame, because of exclusivity, because of financial resources to have the final say in what's happening. People should not have to live with doubt. They shouldn't have to live with accusation. These things need to be dealt with, they need to be adjudicated, they need sensitive responses.
That's what I hope people get from "American Crime."
I don't have the answers. It's not for me to try to impose solutions on people.
Catch new episodes of "American Crime" at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
Katie Barnes is a digital media associate at ESPN. Follow them on Twitter at Katie_Barnes3.
