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SWAT season 4 spoilers follow.
SWAT star Shemar Moore has opened up about the powerful exploration of racial divisions within the police in season four’s premiere episode.
The new season debuted on CBS in the US on Wednesday night (November 11) in a unique episode that flashed between the Black Lives Matter struggle of the present day and the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
Hondo (Moore) and his father, Daniel Sr, grappled with the past as they reflected on the injustice the African-American community faced in Los Angeles both after the Rodney King verdict – events now all too resonant following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
“The final episode [of season 3] kind of felt like a finale in itself and it was also a story that was already hinting at the riots of the next show,” Moore explained to Digital Spy exclusively. “So it just was sadly a perfect storm with what happened with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and others.
“When all the social and racial injustices happened and literally while we were in break and we were all in lockdown here in Los Angeles and around the world, we were all in lockdown, the day that George Floyd lost his life obviously it was a sad day.
“It was a painful day. I don’t care what colour you are or where you’re from, just humanity-wise you could see the wrong in that. So I immediately called Shawn Ryan, our executive producer, showrunner, head writer, some executives from Sony and CBS and I basically said to them ‘we have to address this’.
“And so I called a meeting a few days later with Shawn Ryan, Aaron Thomas, the creator of SWAT, and some of the other writing staff, a couple of the actors, and we sat in my backyard and I said, ‘We wear LAPD uniforms, we wear the uniforms that you see on the news and with all this divide, with all this division, this fear, with all the tensions that’s in the streets between Black and blue between blue and the civilians,’ and I said, ‘It would be a shame for us to just get up on the screen and just run around ignorant, you know, just chasing generic bad guys.’”
The actor noted that addressing Black Lives Matter gave SWAT an opportunity to be “conscious” and “woke” in a genre – the police procedural – that can, at times, be insensitive on the issue of race.
“What I’m really proud of, as you saw in the first episode and we’re going to continue that line of messaging through subsequent episodes, what I’m proud of is that we’re able to entertain people, we still give you that thrill ride of SWAT you know with the theme song – because first and foremost our show is a fun thrill ride,” he explained.
“You know it’s really like watching an action movie on TV. And that’s our signature we’re always going to do that. But all the while we’re also going to mix in current topics and prevalent messages.”
He continued: “If you talk to – I’ve talked in real life to youngsters, say the generation of 30 years and younger – and a lot of them don’t even know who Rodney King is. A lot of them aren’t even aware of the ’92 riots. And so, we addressed that in this episode and it’s interesting to me because we do it through generations…
“To take on these protests and talk about the parallels of the ’92 riots with what’s happening today to address George Floyd. We have his literal words that he said as he was passing away. We have that in the show and it was very hard and difficult for us to shoot it because we knew how poignant and real it was and still how fresh… it was.
“But I took a lot of pride, as a lot of us did, the crew, the actors, the writers – you know again, it’s not about colour it’s about humanity. To be able to stand out there, on this show, and march down the street and hear George Floyd’s words in a peaceful protest, to put that on the screen, through our show, that’s bigger than all of us.”
SWAT season 4 airs Wednesdays at 9pm ET on CBS, and will be airing soon on Sky One in the UK.
