Consider this a case of art imitating life.
With Fox's new event series Shots Fired, co-creators Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood set out to create a 10-episode exploration of our struggling criminal justice system through the lens of one small Southern town's reaction to two racially-charged shootings. When African-American Sheriff's deputy Joshua Beck (Mack Wilds) shoots and kills an unarmed white college student, the Department of Justice sends in the cavalry in the form of seasoned investigator Ashe Akino (Sanaa Lathan) and young prosecutor Preston Terry (Stephan James), both of whom are African-American themselves.
Almost immediately after arriving in the small North Carolina town, the neglected murder of an African-American teen is brought to light, cluing the pair in on the fact that things are not as they seem and the cover-up just may involve some of the state's most powerful people.
For the stars of the event series, the reversal of circumstances in the officer-involved shooting from the onslaught of real-world tragedies that made headlines during the filming of Shots Fired just may be the thing to get people who might not otherwise to sit up and pay attention.
"By setting it up in that way, we give the show from every seat in the house," James explained to E! News at the show's premiere.
"There's a seat from every position at the table, and everybody will be able to get an insight into another perspective that maybe they didn't have before," Lathan added. "I just hope that people actually talk to each other and talk about it and maybe debate and come together because that's what we really need right now."
Filming the series during a particularly intense period of real-world societal turmoil wasn't all that easy, James admitted. "You get chills, reading some of the things we were doing every day. We're literally living in a climate where there's so much source material for this sort of narrative," he said. "For us, we had days where we had just read about Philando Castile and the Dallas shooting of the police officers, and then having to go to work the next day, having to deal with that and cope with that. It's just a reminder of what your purpose is. You can never underestimate how important this type of storytelling is."
For True Blood alum Stephen Moyer, who stars as Lt. Calvert Breeland, the seasoned Sheriff's Department vet caught in the middle of the investigation, the series is a reminder that we can't turn a blind eye to what's going on in the world and expect it to all just go away. "What I think Shots Fired is about is community and America," he said. "For me, race relations and what's been happening with the police and everything that's been going on in the last few years is what America has become and we have to understand it and we have to be empathetic towards it. We can't ignore it."
For more from the trio, be sure to check out the video above. Shots Fired also stars Will Patton, Aisha Hinds, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Conor Leslie, DeWanda Wise and Richard Dreyfuss, along with special guest stars Helen Hunt and Jill Hennessy.
Shots Fired premieres Wednesday, March 22 at 8 p.m. on Fox.