Laurence Fishburne isn’t into sports, so he’d never heard of Doc Rivers, the revered basketball player turned coach that Fishburne plays in the new FX series Clipped. Fishburne had, however, heard of Donald Sterling, the onetime owner of the LA Clippers forced to sell the team in 2014 after a recording surfaced of him espousing racist rhetoric. “I lived in LA, and everybody in LA was aware of the story,” he told BET.  “I wasn't surprised that an NBA owner might have some racist words come out of his mouth;  I was surprised that he was held accountable and responsible and that he ultimately had to deal with the repercussions.” 

Ten years later, Fishburne is more acquainted with the story than he ever figured he would be. As Rivers, Fishburne plays Clippers’ coach, already frustrated with an insufferable a-hole of a boss suddenly thrust into a lose-lose situation once Sterling’s recording surfaced. Now, with a 50,000 ft view of the past and a thoughtful script that puts the events and the characters in the scandal into perspective, Fishburne sees the story in FX’s Clipped, out June 4, as a watershed moment in culture. “The thing that really got me excited was that in the story, there's this confluence of racism, sexism, white privilege, power, social media, and the impact of social media––the spaces that Doc has to move through as the coach. He's in the players' space, he's in the administrative space, he's in the space with the owners, he's dealing with fans. It’s a very nuanced and complicated story.” 

It is, but Clipped is also, in a way, really simple: it illuminates what happened when Sterling’s (played by Ed O’Neill) long-reported, long-unchecked racist attitudes and behavior collided with his assistant V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman)––an ambitious (some might say opportunist) young woman obsessed with the Hollywood life. Clipped depicts how their warped and weird relationship caused strife with Sterling’s wife Shelly (Jacki Weaver), ultimately leading somebody to leak that now infamous recording of Sterling telling Stiviano not to bring Black people to games and stop posting pictures with Black people on her social media. 

Of course, Clipped exhumes much more in its six episodes, looking back at how so much of what was happening at the time laid the groundwork for our modern age where social media, fame, and even athlete activism dictate how we think about sports and culture. Fishburne says that though he hadn’t paid much attention to sports before, playing Rivers––put in the unfortunate position of having to lead a team and manage this crisis simultaneously––gave him a new perspective on that world. “I was able to tap into the fact that I'm a successful Black man in the entertainment industry––and sports is considered part of the entertainment industry––and I've encountered the difficulties and frustrations that we all encounter dealing with institutional racism, the racism baked into our society that’s an everyday fact of our lives.” 

One theme impossible to ignore as the drama plays out is the subtle and overt ways Sterling acted as if he owned the players themselves––an issue Black players across sports genres have raised for generations that recalls the ugliest parts of American history. Fishburne says that while things have changed a bit, the drama that unfolds in Clipped reveals how that sick mindset affected everyone from Rivers to the players down to the fans. “After the Clippers situation we had the Colin Kaepernick situation, and players using their voices to highlight and shine a light. But the challenges that are a result of institutionalized racism inside sports are things that need to be talked about in order for them to change. Things have changed, and there's a lot of work still yet to be done.”

FX’s Clipped premiered with two episodes on Tuesday, June 4, exclusively on Hulu. Subsequent episodes will be released weekly.