Can a Police Procedural Be Aspirational in 2022? How ‘The Rookie: Feds’ Is Tackling ‘Copaganda’ and Systemic Change
- Posted on 30 August, 2024
By focusing on Niecy Nash’s Simone — a Black, queer woman and rookie agent — in “The Rookie: Feds,” co-creator, co-showrunner and executive producer Alexi Hawley knows that the spinoff series cannot shy away from discourse about systemic change and structural racism. In real life, less than 1% of feds are Black women, and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the 2020 protests against police, calls for the termination of law enforcement procedurals have swelled in tandem with discourse about defunding.
The uprisings against racial injustice broke as Hawley and his writers room opened for “The Rookie” Season 3, and the sensitivities of more nuanced depictions of cops has colored his and Terence Paul Winter’s approach to “Feds.”
“It became very clear that ‘aspirational’ wasn’t enough, that we were portraying a version of policing that was alien to a lot of people,” Alexi Hawley tells TheWrap ABC October 18, 2022 @ 6:30 PM By focusing on Niecy Nash’s Simone — a Black, queer woman and rookie agent — in “The Rookie: Feds,” co-creator,…