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SPOILER ALERT: This article includes details about the series finale of “Clipped,” now streaming on Hulu.
The naked emperor is still the emperor. That’s the sad truth that FX’s “Clipped” series brings us to in its latest episode.
After Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill) fails to stop his wife Shelly (Jacki Weaver) from claiming her husband is mentally incompetent and taking control of their family trust, Donald concedes the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to troubled former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer. In doing so, Donald also stops fighting his lifetime ban from the NBA, imposed after TMZ released an audio recording of Sterling delivering a racist tirade to his assistant mistress V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman) berating her for publicly consorting with black men.
For waving the white flag, the Sterlings receive $2 billion when they sell the Clippers: an exponential return on the $12 million Donald spent to buy the team in the 1980s. And after getting richer just by leaving, Donald is seen relaxing naked in his Malibu mansion, a copy of the Los Angeles Times splayed across his pale crotch. Back at a functional marriage, Shelly reminds him of their dinner plans before picking up the paper again, shaking her head with a “this is so sad” and resting it on the octogenarian’s genitals to reveal a very summery 2014 headline: “Ferguson proves he’s a transformative.”
“It was important to show that, in the Sterlings’ world, this tectonic experiment that was happening across the country was just a copy of the LA Times,” says Gina Welch, showrunner, executive producer and writer of “Clipped.” “This series follows a racial debate that was at the heart of the media narrative. But how could we begin to capture what happened that summer?”
Jacki Weaver as Shelley Sterling and Ed O’Neill as Donald Sterling in “Clipped”
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It’s a particularly grating note that encapsulates the retrospective omniscience at the heart of “Clipped.” The show has often braved the uncanny valley: an undertaking that comes with casting actors to play characters like Chris Paul and Steph Curry, with whom audiences have had a relationship for years. (The most notable example of this in the finale — an actor playing Anderson Cooper — was interpreted as an admission on the show’s part that it had completely immersed itself in a weird mirror.)
“There’s a risk in writing a historical series set 10 years ago that you’re trying to tell the viewer everything that’s going to happen after that,” Welch says. But “Clipped” has exploited that awareness to highly anachronistic ends, particularly in its recreations of decade-old meme formats that seem quaint and crude compared to today’s online content. And with the show’s final gesture toward the Black Lives Matter movement, the producers want to contextualize the spectacle of Donald Sterling’s cancellation (a term that hadn’t yet entered the public lexicon at the time) in the context of the beginnings of an American decade defined by political fragmentation.
“The latest news is that the former president and current candidate has said he’s going to work on ‘anti-white sentiment,’” says director and executive producer Kevin Bray. “[The events of this show]seem almost childish compared to a former president saying something that crazy. That’s part of the reason that Ferguson image exists in the show. Who could have imagined what it would become?”
“We’re in the early stages of expressing modern athletes,” says producer and co-writer Rembert Browne, citing the example of the Miami Heat posing in hoodies to draw attention to the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin by a homicide volunteer. “And we’re starting to move toward a Trump we don’t know is coming. Showing some people, like the Sterlings, feeling like, ‘Oh, Ferguson is an event that’s happening over there. It doesn’t affect us,’ felt realistic.”
Earlier in the finale, Stiviano finds herself abandoned by the media circus she’s unleashed. After a disastrous interview with Barbara Walters, she’s sued by the Sterlings, who seize most of her assets, including the duplex Donald gave her. The show leaves her with a difficult conclusion: She sits on the steps of the Sterling estate, reminiscing about the proximity to power she enjoyed before she traded it for five minutes of fame. It’s one of many creative liberties the show has taken with Stiviano, whose exposure during the scandal has been largely limited to a handful of interviews and some paparazzi footage.
Cleopatra Coleman as V. Stiviano in “Clipped”
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“She was very present on Instagram. I had to expose everyone to the Wayback Machine,” Browne says, explaining how he and the other writers dug through internet archives to develop the role. “She left traces, but a lot of those traces have been erased over time.”
“We protect points of view. There are differing opinions about whether Donald and V. had sex or not, or who sent the video to TMZ. I think the viewer can have different experiences on that,” Welch says. “People can reasonably disagree about what actually happened. And Cleo was so dedicated and such a great defender of her character that it became a dialogue between us about whether or not V. would say this or that. She really helped shape it from there.”
For Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne), reaching a conclusion has been a much different challenge. Unlike Stiviano and the Sterlings, Rivers has remained a constant presence in the media and the NBA since the Clippers scandal. He coached in Los Angeles for six more years before resigning in 2020 after the team was eliminated in the conference semifinals, squandering a 3-1 lead to the Denver Nuggets. He then went to the Philadelphia 76ers, who never advanced past the semifinals in his three-year tenure. Today, Rivers is the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, another organization currently defined by star players and championship expectations.
“He has very clear dreams of greatness,” Browne said of Rivers. “Some of those dreams came to him after he became a championship coach with the Celtics. A lot of those dreams have probably been in his body for the last 50 years.”
“Doc ended up leaving the Clippers. You have to try to capture some of those things that the viewer knows are going to happen,” Welch says. “Part of our idea was to do this story about Doc figuring out what’s enough for him. He won a championship with the Celtics. He had a great career as an NBA player. But there’s still something missing.”
The finale of “Clipped” sees Rivers get some satisfaction after the scandal, berating Shelly in a restaurant for his shrewd sale of the team—a brazen act of financial hedging that also included some surprising stipulations, like guaranteed parking spots and VIP passes, the bizarre official title of “number one fan” for Shelly, and the promise of three championship rings if the Clippers ever make it to the top.
But the series finale finds Rivers reuniting with Elgin Baylor (Clifton Davis), one of the greatest NBA players of his era and the Clippers’ general manager for many years. A flashback in Episode 4 highlighted Baylor’s acrimonious exit from the organization. After years of trying to win under relentless pressure from Sterling, Baylor is offered a management demotion. He threatens to sue the organization for wrongful termination and discrimination. (His lawyers dropped the racism charge before trial; the jury later ruled against Baylor’s age discrimination claims and declined to award damages in 2011.)
Everyone on Sterling’s Clippers has to fight for their dignity. But the producers wanted to give the last word to Baylor, one of Sterling’s oldest and most despicable victims (outside of who knows how many individuals who suffered from his discriminatory practices as a property manager) and one of the few who publicly spoke out against the billionaire even as the NBA closed ranks to protect the team’s owner.
Clifton Davis as Elgin Baylor in “Clipped”
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“I never approached this story from a heroic perspective. But to the extent that there is a hero, I think the prerogative of the show is that it’s Elgin Baylor, so we end with him,” Welch says. “It’s the moment where we give the arena back to the legend, after everything that happened to him under Sterling.”
“The characters in the show have lived 10 years since then, and I think a lot of them are better off,” Browne adds. “You learn from your mistakes or missed opportunities. The life that followed is where the catharsis comes in.”
Back to Welch. “He’ll be available once the cameras are gone.”
All six episodes of “Clipped” are now streaming on Hulu.