Exclusive Interview
‘All American’: Michael Evans Behling & Greta Onieogou Reveal How Season 7 Will Test Jordan and Layla
Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) and Layla (Greta Onieogou) have achieved the pinnacle of TV couple success on All American. They were best friends who fell in love. In Season 6, they tied the knot and now live together in Jordan’s childhood home. They’ve overcome personal tragedy and tackled mental health obstacles together. Now they’re newlyweds living it up in a big house while figuring out the next phase of their young careers. There’s nothing to hate here.
However, the happier a couple is when a season starts signals how far they can fall as the episodes progress. Swooon caught up with Behling and Onieogou to ask what is going to challenge Jordan and Layla after they conquered so much last season. They were adamant that the couple is staying on the same page, but the chaos around them may cause some drama at home.
“It’s been very peaceful at work whenever we have scenes because the love is there,” Behling revealed. “I think they’re going to be dealing with a lot of their own situations going on in their life, and they’re going to bring it back to one another. In some ways, it will create some angst, and I think people will enjoy seeing that.”
Onieogou seconded the thought, adding, “There will be some, without saying too much, some external factors that create quite a bit of tension and more than angst at some point. They are a really strong and solid partnership when it comes to just the two of them, but like Michael said, there’s some external factors that test them, and we see them deal with that.”
Those external factors will come from their respective career journeys. Jordan is the new QB coach at Crenshaw and is struggling with how to bond with his players without compromising his position as an authority figure.
“We see him in the first episode interacting with his team in Instagram comments. It’s because he’s wanted a guy for the longest time. To be able to be that for some of these players, or to one of these players, he leans into it a little bit too much, to the point where he has to reel himself back to be able to be there for them in a different way. He can still do that. It’s just a matter of putting up boundaries,” Behling explained.
Meanwhile, Layla needs to figure out what her next empire will be. She’s already a music mogul and manages a successful club. Layla joked in the premiere that she’s peaked in high school, but the struggle to find what her next venture is very real at the start of Season 7.
“She is just trying to figure out what’s next. She’s definitely at a loss. She sees so many other people around her and her close friends starting to achieve their dreams,” Onieogou elaborated. “She feels like she’s in a very fortunate position that she’s done a lot of those things that she dreamed about when she was much younger. It’s really interesting to see her figure out what the next step is.”
The two will find a way to come together during the season, though. They’ll be teaming up as Jordan investigates the mysterious photo he found at the end of Season 6 and begins the search for a missing Baker uncle. It’s going to echo the investigation Jordan launched with Olivia (Samantha Logan) in Season 1 to figure out if Spencer (Daniel Ezra) was their secret sibling. Behling teased that this investigation may end up just as messy.
“He ropes in a trusty sidekick this time. This time, it is going to be his wife, and the two of them get their noses dirty in a very clumsy way, in a true Jordan Baker Inspector Gadget type of fashion,” the actor revealed. “He’s going to get down to the bottom of it eventually, but at what cost?”
We can’t wait to see how the new mystery shakes things up, but we have faith that Jordan and Layla are going to find their way through whatever it brings up.
All American, Season 7, Mondays, 8/7c, CW.
