The Clippers get the true scandal treatment in trailer for FX's Clipped

Based on ESPN podcast "The Sterling Affairs," Clipped revisits the 2013 team led by coach Doc Rivers, and the uproar around the leaking of a racist tape

By Emma Keates  |  April 25, 2024 | 7:19pm
TV News Laurence Fishburne
The Clippers get the true scandal treatment in trailer for FX's Clipped
Clipped Photo: Kelsey McNeal/FX

If you were disappointed by HBO’s decision to cancel Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty last fall, FX’s new show about LA’s other basketball team might be just the thing for you. Based on ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast The Sterling Affairs, FX’s upcoming series Clipped shines a light on all the players—both on and off the court—that were involved in the Clippers’ extremely chaotic 2013-2014 season, which began with the arrival of a famed new coach and culminated in the leaking of some extremely racist remarks from the team’s owner, Donald Sterling, to his then-girlfriend, V. Stiviano.

Clipped follows the recent tradition of scandal-breakdown shows, from The Dropout to Pam & Tommy to even The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Laurence Fishburne stars as Doc Rivers, the Clippers’ optimistic new coach on a path to secure the team their first-ever championship. He just has to get around Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill), the team’s mean, impulsive, and—as the world would notoriously discover later that year—extremely racist owner.

Clipped | Official Trailer | Laurence Fishburne, Jacki Weaver, Cleopatra Coleman, Ed O’Neill | FX

On the sidelines, a power struggle is brewing between Shelly Sterling (Jacki Weaver), Sterling’s wife and business partner of 60 years, and V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman), his much younger assistant and alleged affair partner. All of this, of course, blows up even further when TMZ runs an article with the headline “L.A. CLIPPERS OWNER TO GF: DON’T BRING BLACK PEOPLE TO MY GAMES… Including Magic Johnson,” containing a leaked tape of Sterling saying just that to Stiviano.

“FX’s Clipped is an Obama-era story of racial reckoning delivered via meme, in which V. and the Sterlings discover who really has the power in the internet age, and which leaves Rivers and his players wondering if the expulsion of one bad apple brings about the transformative change the media wants to celebrate,” a synopsis of the show reads. The six-episode series also stars Kelly AuCoin, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Rich Sommers, Corbin Bernsen, Clifton Davis, and Harriet Sansom Harris.

Clipped premieres June 4 on Hulu.

 
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