OWN tonight (June 22) returns its drama series David Makes Man for a new season in which the series’ teenage prodigy returns as a 30-year old man, played by Kwame Patterson (Snowfall).

The series’ sophomore season -- executive produced by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Michael B. Jordan and showrunner Dee Harris-Lawrence -- picks up with the now adult David as a rising businessman facing an opportunity that will change him and his community forever. The mounting pressure forces David to choose between the instincts that helped him survive or finding a new way to live, according to OWN. 

During its first season run, David Makes Man ranked second in its time period across all cable with African-American women and reached over 4.1 million unique viewers on OWN, according to Nielsen.  

Academy Award winner McCraney (Moonlight) spoke to me about David’s transition from teenager to adult in the series' sophomore season as well as the success of the show’s first season. An edited version of the interview appears below.

Picture This: Was it difficult for you to make the main character’s transition from a teen in season one to an adult in season two?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: When we first approached [Oprah] Winfrey about the show, we knew that we always wanted to talk about the ways in which acute childhood trauma shows up in our adult life. So the first season was laying the groundwork for showing how David, with all of his resiliency, survival skills, defense mechanisms, and his amazing imagination matures to a place where he can handle the adult situations that he's in, even though he's a 13-year-old kid. In season two, we'd always planned to show how those defense mechanisms and survival skills were hindering him from clearly living in the present. It shows an older David who has reached maturation and a place of respect from where he quote-unquote comes from, but is he actually living in his present? Is he having relationships that are bountiful and nourishing? It’s an exciting place to be because we knew where we were going -- whether or not we were going to get here was the question. You always have to wait and hope that the show will be picked up for another season, but we’re really excited to bring this to the home viewers and to the world.

Picture This: Following up on that, were you surprised by the success of season one, both from an audience perspective and from the critical acclaim that the show received? 

TAM: I'm always surprised … you never can count those things. As an artist, there's always a chance that someone is thinking about their taxes at the same time that they're looking at your show and they could absolutely miss all of the things that you're hoping to engage them in. I think for me, it has been exciting to see people engaged in a deep way. For example, there's a college course that's been created by multiple institutions -- one at Morehouse College, one at UConn Health Disparities Institute -- that look at the show on a scholastic level, and then there’s all of these groups on Facebook who have conversations about the work we’re doing. That's always really exciting and I certainly didn't expect it.

Picture This: We see David’s maturation in season two, but what else should viewers expect to see in the upcoming season? 

TAM: When we were in season one, we focused on the narrow path of a 15 year-old kid who was trying to get into a school. What came with that were certainly some side roads, but when we get into adulthood, there's a lot more chaos. It offers a 360 degree panorama of David’s life as an adult and how he's trying to handle that with the same amazing tools of a 15 year old in the 30 year old body. And I think that you can expect some of that to be really funny, sexy, and heartbreaking, but all of it with intention and love. 

Dee Harris-Lawrence proved she was a Wonder Woman when she took on the Amazonian task of running two shows at the same time — OWN’s David Makes Man and CBS’s All Rise. She agreed to do both before the pandemic hit, and it wasn’t long before she found herself spending hours on Zoom with the casts and crews of both shows. 

“I did say to people after that, ‘If I ever say I’m going to run two shows at the same time, pull me off somewhere and slap me across the face,” Harris-Lawrence joked.

Joking aside, for Tarell Alvin McCraney, David Makes Man’s writer and creator, Harris-Lawrence was the reason his show about a 14-year-old boy fighting to make his way out of the projects was able to go forward. 

“We needed her,” said McCraney, who wrote the play on which the Oscar-winning movie Moonlight was based. “She has a strong voice as a writer. She has a fascinating ability with systems and structure and I had never created a show for TV before.

Wonder Women Los Angeles: Shining Bright in the Hollywood Spotlight

“But what finally made us understand that this was the person who was going to guide our ship was that she had grown up in a very similar way to the show’s main character,” he added. “She just brought so much together in a way we desperately needed.”

Harris-Lawrence, with her writer’s ear for character, brought that same talent to All Rise, which starred Simone Missick as Los Angeles County Judge Lola Carmichael.

“Dee was such a breath of fresh air coming into the first season of All Rise,” Missick said. “She immediately had a goal and a vision for my character that was innovative and specific to her being a Black woman in a position of power. That attention to detail was what I think allowed the audience to continue to fall in love with these people on a human level.” (CBS canceled All Rise in May.)

Harris-Lawrence has been working in television for several years, starting as Quincy Jones’s assistant and then working for Suzanne de Passe before briefly going out on her own to try her hand at writing screenplays. She was quickly called back to work as a writer’s assistant on Sister, Sister, but she kept writing on her own. After producer Josh Goldstein happened to read a spec script she left out on her desk, he gave her a shot on teen series Sweet Valley High that helped get her going.

But first, she took a detour to get her MBA. After the first year, she scored a job as a writer on Fox’s New York Undercover but, again juggling several things at once, finished the program.

“Having my MBA definitely helped in managing people,” Harris-Lawrence said. “I’m very systems-oriented, but I also have always been obsessed with television, books and movies. I kind of toggle between my left brain and my right.”

“She’s just great at what she does,” said Susan Rovner, chairman, entertainment content, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, who hired her for both shows when she was president of Warner Bros. Television. “You know she’s good because of the distinct quality of the product she puts out — the consistency of how good those episodes are, the fact that they are on budget, on time and creatively excellent.”

Sought-After Skill Set

Having all of those skills in one person makes Harris-Lawrence a rare commodity in Hollywood, and with the current content explosion, ever more in demand.

Next up, she’s heading into production on Josephine, a limited series she wrote about chanteuse Josephine Baker starring Ruth Negga. Harris-Lawrence is executive producing the series along with LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s Springhill Productions, with Millicent Shelton directing. All three women — Harris-Lawrence, Negga and Shelton — are executive producing the series, which is in development at ABC Signature.

Said Harris-Lawrence: “It’s a great blessing and a really nice position to be in, especially as we’re all coming out of this pandemic. It’s exciting to be able to really dig into all these other stories I want to tell.”  

OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network recently renewed drama series David Makes Man for its second season. The series, created by Moonlight writer and Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, follows the exploits of a teenage African-American prodigy looking for a way out of his poor neighborhood while attending a magnet school for gifted students.

David Makes Man showrunner Dee Harris-Lawrence (Shots Fired, Chicago P.D.) spoke with Multichannel News senior content producer, programming R. Thomas Umstead about the social impact of the series, as well as the burgeoning opportunities for producers in today’s multiplatform television environment.

What has surprised you the most about the reaction to David Makes Man? One of the most positively surprising things has been the number of young African-American men that have come up to us regarding the show. It’s one thing to say that the show was great; it's another thing when they say, ‘thank you — finally someone is telling our story,’ because there has never been a show like this about a young African-American boy and what they go through on a day-to-day basis.

What initially drew you to the project? After I met with Tarell for the job of showrunner we had this vibe between us, and I told him that after I read the script that I was the female version of this character of David. I was a daydreamer, and when I started writing, my daydreams finally quieted down because I was writing things down. So I could relate to David in that way in terms of being bused [to school] and living in different neighborhoods; it spoke to me in a major way.

How much input did OWN have in developing the storylines and episodes? It’s a different type of show for OWN because it centers around a 13-year-old African-American boy, but OWN was fantastic because we asked a lot of questions and let them know ahead of time that there would be language and situations. They told us that we had a lot of creative freedom — they did not hover over us or hinder the process. They provided us with the opportunity to tell the story the way we wanted to, which was awesome.

As a showrunner/writer, is this the best time to be in the television business? I would definitely say yes. I even told a group of students that when I first started, we only had the broadcast networks; today, you can create your own series on your phone, post it and people will be able to see it. So it's a great time to be able to not have any hindrances or anything blocking you. As long as you have a good story to tell, this is a great time to tell it.

Do you have any concerns that there may eventually be a ceiling to the number of shows created by and starring people of color and women? I don’t have any concerns only because of the fact that we have so many channels and so much content available today. Also, it’s a different world today because of social media, as well as because of the mindset of the young people globally that are coming up today. They are all unapologetic as to who they are, and everybody feels like they do have a say. It gets me excited to be able to help as many young people as possible to tell their stories.

BONUS FIVE

What’s on your DVR?Watchmen, Project Runway, Black-ish, This Is Us, David Makes Man, Euphoria, Killing Eve
Favorite show of all time? Don’t have just one — The Wire, The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Homicide: Life on the Street
Favorite podcast?Serial
What books are on your night table?Becoming by Michelle Obama; Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
What's your top bucket list travel destination? South Africa, Greece, northern Norway

The fall TV season will see a continued influx of scripted shows featuring people of color in front of and behind the camera across traditional cable and streaming services.

New shows from such acclaimed producers as Ava DuVernay (OWN’s Cherish the Day), Will Packer (BET+’s Bigger), Tonya Saracho (Starz’s Bruhas) and Lena Waithe (Showtime’s How to Make Love to a Black Woman) will launch during the 2019-20 season, adding to an already unprecedented number of scripted series featuring minority producers and actors.

According to the 2019 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, members of minority groups comprised 11.2% of all cable scripted show creators and producers during the 2016-17 television season, up from the 7.4% registered during the 2011-12 season. While there is room for improvement, show creators say that the signs are encouraging.

Multichannel News posed questions in separate interviews to some key content creators, producers and actors of color to get their thoughts on the opportunities today to create and produce shows that revolve around people of color.

MCN: Given the multitude of distribution outlets and platforms, is this the best time during your career to be a creator of multicultural-themed content?
Diallo Riddle (co-creator, IFC sketch comedy Sherman’s Showcase; Comedy Central sitcom South Side): I think it’s a good time to be in this business, being a black creator. I know there are all types of people out there with scripts and finished projects that you can’t sell, and you’re hitting walls. I don’t want to seem naive, but I do think that we are in a better time than we were a couple of years ago in the sense that I don’t think these executives — who for the most part are still white — are trying to force us to abandon our vision for what they think is best.

Dee Harris-Lawrence (showrunner, OWN drama series David Makes Man): What is great right now is there’s so much opportunity. When I started you only had the broadcast networks, but today you can film your story on your phone and post it for all to see. It’s such a great time to be able to not have any hindrances keeping you from telling your story. As long as you have a story to tell, it’s a great time to be in the industry.

George Takei (consultant/actor, AMC horror drama series Terror: Infamy): I do think that it’s a wonderful time to be in the business and that we have the opportunity to tell a story on this scale and this depth of detail. There’s also a lot of competition now — before there were only three networks — now there are more distributors and a thousand different stories being told, so the competition is there, but so is the opportunity.

MCN: Are cable networks allowing you the freedom to tell your story without editorial restrictions on language or casting?
Bashir Salahuddin (co-creator, Comedy Central’s South Side, IFC’s Sherman’s Showcase): As an artist you spend your whole career trying to get with people who trust you enough to secure and support your vision, and we’ve found that. We have the opportunity to come up with a lot of creative ideas and no one is telling us that we can’t do something.

Alexander Woo (co-creator, AMC’s Terror: Infamy): Not once was there ever any pushback about how we need to make this more accessible for the general viewer who might not be Japanese-American. The [dialogue] is often subtitled and most of the actors are Japanese-American, but I think we’re in an era now where broadcasters are willing to take greater risks because the rewards are being borne out.

Riddle: I think if you find the right place where they trust you and let you do the things you want to do you’re good. When we saw that invisible car pull off in that episode of Atlanta on FX, I was like [Atlanta creator Donald Glover] has a good relationship with them because we could not have pitched that in some of the places that we developed and not hit a deadly amount of pushback.

MCN: Will the industry continue to seek out new content that reflects the experiences and images of people of color?
Woo: When you have 500 different scripted shows, I think it’s incumbent for every broadcaster to have something that everyone doesn’t have one of already. Far from being a detriment to our show, the fact that we were so different was a strength, and I’m really glad that in this particular climate broadcasters are seeing difference as a strength.

Harris-Lawrence: I don’t have any concerns only because of how many channels we have, and it’s a different world due to social media. It’s also a different world with regards to the young people coming up — they are all unapologetic as to who they are, and they have a say and a vision that’s going global. It gets me excited to want to help as many young people be able to tell their stories and not allow it to go backwards; we’re flooding the gates.

Takei: I think [the distributors] will continue to want to tell our stories compellingly so that we can grab the audiences that want to see it.