The Crossover, based on the novel by Kwame Alexander, premieres on Disney Plus April 5. The show is about twins in middle school, J.B. and Josh, who are basketball standouts. Their father is a former NBA player with some health issues, and their mother is a no-nonsense school principal — at the boys’ school, no less.
Alexander’s novel, which came out in 2014, is full of poems that tell the story of the boys, their family and their hoops ambitions. Every word in the novel is part of a poem.
Alexander told B+C the biggest challenge of taking the project to television was “trying to figure out how to bring the poetry to the screen. I did not want to be didactic, I didn’t want to be cliche, I didn’t want to be formulaic, in bringing the poetry to the TV screen.”
The series is a mix of traditional narrative and poetry. “How do our characters incorporate verse and rhythm and rhyme in their dialogue?” Alexander said. “Once we figured it out it was smooth sailing.”
The challenge of casting the show was finding a couple teen boys who can act, and can portray basketball superstars-in-training. “When we cast it, we looked for identical twins who can act, who are ballers,” Alexander said. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
Instead, the producers hired talented actors, and put the boys, Jalyn Hall and Amir O’Neil, through hoops training. Alexander said basketball “boot camp” lasted about a year. “We figured it would be easier to train them on how to be ballers than to train them to be great actors,” he said.
Hall, who plays Josh “Filthy” Bell, and O’Neil, who portrays Jordan “J.B.” Bell, got a kick out of the basketball lessons. “They enjoyed it so much that sometimes they’d hit the basketball court instead of lunch,” ,” Alexander said.
Daveed Diggs narrates and executive produces. LeBron James is an executive producer too. So are Alexander, Damani Johnson, Kimberly A. Harrison, Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, Lezlie Wills, George Tillman Jr., Bob Teitel, Robert Prinz, Jay Marcus, Todd Harthan and Erin O’Malley. Alexander, Johnson and Harrison are the showrunners.
There are eight episodes. Besides their basketball endeavors, the boys deal with their father’s health issues, and one of the twins getting a girlfriend, and how that affects their lifelong partnership.
A review in The Hollywood Reporter said, “It doesn’t quite achieve the lyrical poeticism of OWN’s David Makes Man or the earnest adolescent sincerity of Freevee’s High School or the proficiently executed basketball rush of Apple TV Plus’s Swagger or the enticing time-jumping mystery of The WB’s Jack & Bobby. But in even conjuring up those connections, the adaptation of Kwame Alexander’s novel-in-verse at least shows wide-ranging ambition that goes beyond lots of shows targeting a comparably young demographic.
“The Crossover generates some satisfying emotional beats, blends its coming-of-age and adult storylines well and, as derivative as some of its individual pieces may feel, its overall voice is likably distinctive.”
Alexander won the Newbery Medal in 2015 for his novel. He said he did not think about a TV series or film based on The Crossover — not until he won the Newbery Medal. “I was just concerned with trying to get the characters right,” he said, “trying to tell the best story, trying to tell a story I would love when I was 12 and a story I would love now.”
