Exclusive: Greenleaf Creator Craig Wright Answers Fans’ Questions On Series Finale & Spinoff

Last night’s Season 5 and Series finale of OWN’s Greenleaf saddened many fans. From the moment it was announced that the show would end after five seasons, there was an uproar. Over the years, the fanbase grew and characters were either loved or despised. Shortly afterwards, it was also announced that there would be a spinoff series. With Keith David’s Bishop’s death, Lady Mae’s leading the church and Grace’s exit, did fans get what they wanted?

BlackFilmandTV.com spoke exclusively with the show’s creator Craig Wright to answer some of those burning questions that fans want to know following the finale.

Whose decision was it to have the series end at five?

Craig Wright: Right before she decided to go ahead with the whole series, Oprah and I sat at dinner and she asked me how many seasons do you want it to be? And I said five because Six Feet Under was five seasons. That was my first job. And everybody threw a fit when Alan (Ball) decided to just make that five seasons long because it could have gone on. But I think his instinct was really good, which is leave before they're asked you to and also just leave before anyone sees it coming. Especially if your show is about either mortality or what we would call things that have infinite value, meaningful things. The more your show’s about meaningful things, the more you want its operations to mimic reality. And so reality is things and when you don't expect them to, reality is they usually end sooner than you want them to. So the more you mimic that, the more you're going to feel like part of nature and part of the world to people, which is a good trick given how fake TV is.

The show has built a big following over the years, and so even as you and Oprah had decided long ago that the series would end at five, couldn’t you have gone on with a new show runner?

Craig Wright: Sure, some people mentioned that. Not Oprah. But some people mentioned that. It's not a good idea. And if I can make a complicated point, the fact that there isn't anything else like it, the fact that it came into being during the time of the rise of black TV premium drama.

It's sort of important actually, to transmit the idea to the audience, that there's going to be more, don't hold on to things. Let's work from a position of plenty, and hope and positivity. Not like, "Oh, no. There’s only four or five great black TV shows right now and you're getting rid of this one?" Stop thinking that way. Stop having a deficit mentality. Let's make more, just make more. I knew there was going to be a Greenleaf spinoff. I think it's important to let things be great. The whole the whole demon of television. The whole demon of television is that voice you just gave, which is make it go on. Make it last but that sentence has a parenthesis in it, which is so we can sell shit. I don't care about selling shit. I want to make something great. To whatever degree Greenleaf has been good to great, it's goodness or greatness will be increased by having quit early. It's just a fact. I wish I could hand this show over to somebody. I tried in season two, but it did not work out. It wasn't my decision that it didn't work out. Oprah decided it didn't work out.

What went into killing off Bishop?

Craig Wright: Looking back at the whole story of Greenleaf, it will be seen quite unexpectedly, what the story always was, is that Grace's return home would surprisingly results in the coming into power of her mother. By starting the show with the story about sexual abuse, and the silence around it, perpetrated by men in this case, that was always setting up the show to be a takedown of the patriarchy. That was always going to happen.

Bishop had his own issues, which had nothing to do with sexuality but which very much had to do with greed and ambition. So to me when I came into this, I was very new to this. The first impression I got about the black church, was that the pastor and the first lady were sacrosanct. Don't mess with them. People love their bishop. People love their first lady. I knew, oddly enough, that that those are exactly the people we had to go after. Starting with the bishop because that's how you're going to bring meaning to the conversation. You're not going to bring meaning picking on what everybody's already to pick on. You got to pick at what they don't want picked at. Looking back, you see the show is really about disposing of the bishop. But the reason Oprah I think gave me the job after we talked, is that she knew that I was going to do it with the most respect. 

As bittersweet as it is, Keith David obviously has delivered this character with so much love and integrity. I understand why the audience is heartbroken to see him go, but heartbreak is part of life. And Lady Mae if you watched the finale, you know that there is a future. Lady Mae’s voice is going to rise up now. That is going to be important and so the first chapter was always about moving him off to the side. That doesn't mean he won't appear in the spinoff in some way. But it's time for the women who've been making the church run to be the ones running the church.

Can you talk about ending the series with Grace leaving the Greenleaf gate. The show started with her coming into through the gate.

Craig Wright: There has been a sort of unspoken narrative all through the show about the struggle that black people had to go through to get privileged and and then how hard they hold on to it once they got it. and rightfully so. I was always interested from the beginning of the show how that sits against the gospel at an odd angle. In the credits sequence you see near the end of the credit sequence of the show every week, Bishop’s hand with a big gold ring, and holding that Bible. There's the whole question to the show right there. How does the struggle to overcome racism in America sit against the demands of the gospel?  Which is all about, give it away, don't do it. It's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

So that gate stands for all of that. It is very interesting and important that when she leaves, it's like, we're done with that story now, like we're done. It's breaking open, because you see now Tara James has already made inroads into Jacob's heart. She’s already talked about using that house for more ministerial purposes. In the spinoff, we're going to leave that world behind. We’re going to go into Memphis, downtown and be with the people on the street today, living the problem. We’re going to leave behind that reconstruction plantation nonsense. And we're going to be in the black experience, the modern world, and we're gonna leave that privilege behind.

When you have the finale, there are certain people we want to see and certain things we want to get resolved. What happened to Kevin?

Craig Wright: There are times when life imitates art. There's times when art imitates life. To whatever degree Kevin as a character might still be ambivalent about his own fate. i.e adding a sexuality he can't deny, but can't completely affirm, there was no way to put Kevin or the actor who plays him inside the show after a certain point.

What about Mavis? Was there talk to bring back Oprah for the finale?

Craig Wright: There was but in the end, Oprah and I really wanted the show to launch out into history on its own steam and unfettered. When people watch Mavis, but they don't perceive her as Mavis. That's Oprah Winfrey on her show. It doesn't help the story and and she knows that. We were all on the same page. Even though we know people want that, you don't always get what you want in life and the more you do that in television, it creates a sense of reality. If you brought Mavis back then it makes good TV but doesn't make good art. 

What can you say about the spinoff?

Craig Wright: I can say that a Lady Mae is definitely at the center of the story. It's about continuing the story of putting the women in power in the church. It's about leaving behind that gated, privileged world and entering a much more rough and tumble gritty reality and asking questions about how on earth can the church be relevant inside that post Black Lives Matter, post COVID-19 world. It’s about Jacob navigating. Navigating the love triangle, which I believe is latent and obvious inside the finale of of Greenleaf. It's about Charity showing up, having learned a lot of unexpected lessons from her past five years and maybe becoming quite a different person. I'm really excited to get started on it. I'm really excited to have Lady Mae write sermons for every week. It's also about the way that Bishop continues to resonate in everybody's life, inside their own minds.

If you’re bringing back Lady Mae, Jacob and a portion of the cast, why make it a spinoff? You could have kept it as Greenleaf? Other shows have gone on when one of the main cast members has left the series?

Craig Wright: It needed to stop to start again. There's a sense of weariness. After enough seasons, the audience is like, even if they want more, there's this feeling of "here we go." I'm really glad that we broke it. Because when it stops, then it can really start. If we just kept calling it Greenleaf and made it the same show but just started season six with everything I'm talking about, there would be a sense of weariness about it. Christianity isn't wrong when they say, “You got to put the seed in the ground. You got to let it die. Then you got to wait and then it comes up again.” Let it die, and then wait for the new life. That's a far more powerful feeling. Then here comes season six.

The finale makes it seem that the spinoff would be about Grace?

Craig Wright: I definitely see Grace as being part of the of the spinoff. But I see grace, very much like Oprah, she needs to go out into the world and find her secular podium, where she can do the work that is uniquely suited to her voice. Just like going into the city, in the new show, being able to see Grace in her fulfillment and not trying to fit in to the old fashioned church, but really becoming a new kind of voice. Again, it's about moving forward and broadening the frame of the show. So Grace is definitely part of that.

Is there a five year plan for this as well?

Craig Wright: I can tell you this, you won't see Phil until season three.

From Six Feet Under to Greenleaf, what have you learned from the two series that keeps you motivated to keep doing this? You tackled the funeral business, and you tackled the black church business. What is this spinoff going to tackle that we haven't seen before?

Craig Wright: Well, I think it's going to tackle two things, and they sort of go together. One what happens when women who have been working in general behind the scenes to make everything run, what happens when they're the ones out in front? What happens when the criticisms and the attacks are coming at them? Sometimes just because they're women, and what that's going to do. Also, to go further and deeper into the question of what on earth really is the relevance of Christianity in our time? How is it really going to keep mattering in a multicultural, multi faith world? In a world where the reality and the truth of Islam, the reality and the truth of Judaism, the reality and the truth of Buddhism and Hinduism, that the internet is bringing the truth all the time. We live in a network of patchwork quilt of beliefs, what is Christianity and how can it matter in a unique way, while also acknowledging and relating to the truths of those other faiths? We need to go into that question. We can't keep pretending that it's just Christianity. 

When will the spinoff come on?

Craig Wright: Be the good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, before the end of 2021.