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The pitch, honestly, every time
I heard it, I wanted to cry.
I've been calling it the greatest pitch of all time.
I describe "David Makes a Man" like poetry on TV.
How do you describe it?
I describe it as lifting the larger questions,
theories and investigations about who we are
and how we got here.
How did I get here?
What is your story?
Will there be one?
AKILI MCDOWELL: David is a 14-year-old prodigy
that's trying to make it out to a better place.
Overcoming trauma and difficult circumstances.
It's a story of coming of age and beyond,
of community and family, of search for identity.
It's a story of dualism and dichotomy.
The idea of code switching.
That game that you play to accomplish the pitfalls
and all the obstacles that you come
across coming from the hood.
I was one of those kids also.
This story is an unapologetically black story
about a young prodigy who through the use
of his imagination, is creating a world
for himself that is bigger than where he comes from.
And his mind is always changing.
Whenever he is having like a rough time,
that's when he goes to to escape.
That's his way out from really losing it.
Hey.
There is nothing down there, nothing at all.
People need to see your eyes, David.
You cannot sink down.
PHYLICIA RASHAD: We're certainly looking at the character David.
But David is not the only character.
Morning.
PHYLICIA RASHAD: There is a full panorama of humanity
in this series presented in ways to just have never seen before.
So authentically.
Watch your words about the field, young son.
And this line, it ain't here to protect you.
It's to protect them from these projects.
The Ville is a dynamic character within itself.
In this community, there are known drug dealers.
And children can follow in the footsteps
of what they are seeing in their immediate environment.
A lot of times you think of the projects
and you see pain and turmoil, but no
one talks about the joy and the love
that is experienced within these whole communities.
The Ville is a place that we all become men
and we all learn to deal with the world around us.
We learn how to survive.
We learn how to fight.
We also learn how to love in The Ville.
Bye, Dave.
See you around.
The Ville is home.
This show is about people, about humans.
The beautiful thing is it gives us an opportunity to walk
a mile in someone else's shoes.
As a black woman, for me it's important to let people
know that they're not alone.
It's an amazing feeling to be an audience member
and have your story reflected back to you.
It's so important to tell stories
differently in different ways and in new ways.
This show is so real, so blunt.
It's coming at you about like how it really
is, not sugar-coating anything.
It's about resilience, perseverance and overcoming
the things that previously held us down.
Terrell is tapping into aspects of life
that we have not seen on television thus far.
And he's stepping into it boldly,
and he's stepping into it with a ton
of creativity and imagination.
The way Tarell writes, it was like,
man, this is what I got to be a part of.
Sometimes we hear that there's a certain way
to tell black stories, and that's just not true.
For our show, there's a lot of sensory,
there's a lot of feeling, there's a lot of depth,
there's a lot of what some might call art.
But it also is about emotional resonance.
The things that we can't quite quantify that sneak up on us.
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