What Happened to V. Stiviano, Elgin Baylor?

SPOILER ALERT: This text includes details in regards to the series finale of “Clipped,” now streaming on Hulu.

The emperor with no clothes remains to be the emperor. That’s the ugly truth that FX‘s “Clipped” arrives at in its series finale.

After Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill) fails to dam his wife Shelly (Jacki Weaver) from alleging her husband is mentally incapacitated and taking control of their family trust, Donald concedes to the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to the rambunctious ex-Microsoft exec Steve Ballmer. With that, Donald also stops fighting against his lifetime ban from the NBA, imposed against him after TMZ publishes an audio recording of Sterling delivering a racist tirade to his assistant-mistress V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman) chastising her for publicly associating with Black people.

For waving the white flag, the Sterlings are awarded $2 billion within the sale of the Clippers: an exponential return on the $12 million that Donald spent to buy the team within the ’80s. And after being made much, much richer for the straightforward act of going away, Donald is seen kicking back buck-naked at his Malibu mansion, a duplicate of the Los Angeles Times splayed over his pale crotch. Back to a functional marriage, Shelly reminds him of their dinner plans before picking up the paper, shaking her head with a “so sad” and dropping it back onto the octogenarian’s genitals to disclose a really summer of 2014 headline: “Ferguson proves transformative.”

“It felt necessary to indicate that, within the Sterlings’ world, this tectonic experience that was happening across the country was just a duplicate of the L.A. Times,” says Gina Welch, showrunner, executive producer and author for “Clipped.” “This series follows a racial reckoning that had a bow tied on it within the media narrative. But how could you then begin to capture what happened that summer?”

It’s a very gnarly note that sums up a retrospective omniscience at the guts of “Clipped.” The series often braved the uncanny valley: an undertaking that comes with the turf of casting actors to play figures like Chris Paul and Steph Curry, with whom the general public has had a relationship for years. (The ultimate episode’s superlative instance of this — an actor playing Anderson Cooper — played as an admission by the show that it had fully immersed through some bizarro looking glass.)

“There’s a danger — in writing a period show that takes place 10 years ago — of attempting to tell the viewer every thing that’s going to occur after,” Welch says. But “Clipped” owned that awareness to sharply anachronistic ends, particularly in its recreations of decade-old meme formats that appear moderately quaint and rudimentary in comparison with today’s online content. And with the show’s final gesture toward the brewing Black Lives Matter movement, the producers want to put the spectacle of Donald Sterling’s cancellation (a term that hadn’t entered the general public lexicon on the time) into context because the beginnings of an American decade defined by political fragmentation.

“Recent news is that the ex-president and current candidate is saying that he’s going to work on ‘anti-white feeling,’” director and executive producer Kevin Bray says. “[The events of this show] seem almost childlike in comparison with having an ex-president say something so batshit. That’s a part of the explanation why that image of Ferguson exists within the show. Who could have ever fathomed what this is able to develop into?”

“That is within the early stages of contemporary athletes starting to talk up,” says producer and co-writer Rembert Browne, citing when the Miami Heat posed in hoodies to attract attention to the murder of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a crime-watch volunteer in 2012. “And we’re beginning to head right into a Trump that we don’t know is coming. Showing some people, just like the Sterlings, feeling that, ‘Oh, Ferguson’s a thing that’s happening over there. That doesn’t impact us,’ felt realistic.”

Earlier within the finale, Stiviano finds herself left within the dust by the media circus she’d sparked. After a disastrous interview with Barbara Walters, she’s sued by the Sterlings, who seize most of her assets, including the duplex given to her by Donald. The series leaves her off with a tricky coda: finding her seated back on the steps of the Sterling estate, reminiscing in regards to the proximity to power she enjoyed before trading it for five minutes of fame. It’s one in every of several creative liberties that the show took with Stiviano, whose exposure throughout the scandal was largely limited to a handful of interviews and a few paparazzi documentation.

“She was form of heavy on IG. I had to reveal everyone to the Wayback Machine,” Browne says, explaining how he and the opposite writers dug through the Web Archive to develop the role. “She left bread crumbs, but lots of those bread crumbs got deleted over time.”

“We protect the points of view. There are differing opinions about whether or not Donald and V. had a sexual relationship, or who sent the tape to TMZ. I believe that the viewer can have different experiences of that query,” Welch says. “People can reasonably disagree by way of what really happened. And Cleo was so dedicated and such an awesome advocate for her character that it became a dialogue between us whether or not V. would say a certain thing. She really helped shaped it from there.”

Coming to a conclusion for Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne) posed a really different challenge. Unlike Stiviano and the Sterlings, Rivers has remained a consistent presence within the media and the NBA for the reason that Clippers scandal. He coached in L.A. for six more years before stepping down in 2020 after the team was eliminated within the conference semifinals, squandering a 3-1 lead against the Denver Nuggets. He then went to the Philadelphia 76ers, who never made it past the semifinals in his three-year tenure. Now, Rivers is the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks — one other organization that’s currently defined by star players and championship expectations.

“He has these very clear dreams of greatness,” Browne says of Rivers. “A few of that got thrown on him after he became a championship coach with the Celtics. A variety of that has probably been existing in his body for the past 50 years.”

“Doc ended up leaving the Clippers. You do must attempt to capture a few of those things that the viewer knows will occur,” Welch says. “That was a part of our idea in making this story about Doc considering what’s enough for him. He has a championship from the Celtics. He had this great profession as an NBA player. But there’s still something missing.”

The “Clipped” finale sees Rivers get some satisfaction after the scandal, admonishing Shelly in a restaurant for her cunning sale of the team — a shameless act of economic ass-covering that also included some eyebrow-raising stipulations, like guaranteed parking spaces and VIP passes, the strange official title of “Number One Fan” for Shelly, and the promise of three championship rings if the Clippers ever make it to the highest.

However the series’ last scene sees Rivers reuniting with Elgin Baylor (Clifton Davis) — one in every of the nice NBA players of his time and the Clippers’ longtime general manager. A flashback in Episode 4 shined a light-weight on Baylor’s acrimonious exit from the organization. After years of attempting to win under Sterling’s ruthless penny-pinching, Baylor is obtainable a demotion within the front office. He threatens to sue the organization for wrongful termination and discrimination. (His attorneys dropped the racism allegation ahead of the trial; the jury then ruled against Baylor’s claims of age discrimination and declined to award damages in 2011.)

Everybody finally ends up having to fight for his or her dignity inside Sterling’s Clippers. However the producers wanted to offer the last word to Baylor — one in every of Sterling’s oldest and most abjectly treated victims (outside of who-knows-how-many individuals that suffered under his discriminatory practices as a property manager) and one in every of the few that publicly stood up against the billionaire whilst the NBA closed ranks to guard the team owner.

“I never approached this story from an idea of heroism. But to the extent that there’s a hero, I do think the show’s prerogative is that it’s Elgin Baylor, which is why we end with him,” Welch says. “It’s that moment where we give the sector back to the legend, in spite of everything that’s happened to him under the ownership of Sterling.”

“The people within the show have lived 10 years since then, and I believe lots of them are higher for it,” Browne adds. “You learn from either mistakes or missed opportunities. The life that got here after that is where the catharsis is available in.”

Back to Welch. “It’s available after the cameras have gone away.”

All six episodes of “Clipped” at the moment are streaming on Hulu.