All American star Bre-Z discusses Coop's 'very emotional' season 4 journey

The star tells EW about finding out Coop survived, and what comes next.

By
Samantha Highfill
Samantha Highfill
Samantha Highfill

Samantha is a writer based in Los Angeles. Television is her one true love, and she tweets about it. A lot.

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Published on November 15, 2021 02:06PM EST

When All American ended its third season, it left fans with one of its biggest cliffhangers yet: Will Coop (Bre-Z) survive? Thankfully, season 4 saw Coop recover from her gunshot wound, but a few episodes in, she's still dealing with its effects. Most recently, she made the painful decision to stop making music because her lung capacity was diminished as a result of her injury. But who is Coop without music? And how will it affect all of her relationships?

EW spoke with Bre-Z about Coop's latest journey.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When your character is shot, do the writers come to you ahead of time and say, "Heads up, this is happening, but don't worry. You're not dead." What was the process of you learning about this?

BRE-Z: Yeah, my showrunner scheduled a call and I remember laying in the bed and she was telling me like, "Okay, so see the finale, Coop's going to get shot." And I was like, "What do you mean?!" But she was like, "I don't want you to worry." She didn't tell me if I was going to live or die. She just said she didn't want me to worry. So I was kind of on edge until, you know, I got the first [season 4] script. I'm so thankful that they decided to save my life.

Now that Coop has survived, this might end up being one of the most emotional storylines for her, because we get to watch her struggle with losing her dream and figuring out what to do next.

Yeah. It was very emotional. And I think it was so emotional for our audience. It got to a point where I just had to stay off of social media and off of my Twitter and stuff, because people were really bent out of shape about it, you know? And I didn't have anything to tell anybody. I was even seeing people in the mall, a lady came up to me and she just was crying. I'm realizing like, wow, this show really touches people. People are really invested here and especially in my character. And it puts a little pressure on me, like, okay, girl, you got to perform now. You know what I mean? They are waiting to see what's going to happen with you.

All American
The CW

Well, what has the experience been like for you? Do you feel like you're getting to explore a new side of a character that you've now played for so many years?

Yeah, absolutely. People don't necessarily just stay the same. And I think we should be seeing growth within Coop. This is the huge challenge, coming out of a gunshot. It's a lot to even portray that because there are people who have been through it and it's like, "Am I playing it right?" But I'm definitely excited to see how she comes out on the other side of this. And we're not that far along yet, you know, but I'm interested to know like what, where does Coop story go from here?

I will say one of the things that I did not ever see coming, but I'm hoping I see more of now, is her friendship with Asher (Cody Christian). They're both going through something similar of: What do you do if your dream is no longer a possibility?

Right. And Cody and I, we have such a good relationship off screen, but we've never really had any work together on screen. So we are super excited because this is something that we both wanted for years. We've been wanting to work together. We've wanted our characters to come together and it's finally happened, so we're super excited about that. And just as you are, I'm interested to see where that goes, where does this friendship go? I think it does have a lot of potential, and that's why I'm just so interested to see where our writers take it. And I love working with Cody and I love his character. I love Asher.

Coop and Patience (Chelsea Tavares) have been together for a while, and they've been through so much. Now, with Coop potentially being done with music, I'm sure that's going to put a strain on things. What's it been like for you to really get to play the ups and downs of that relationship?

I do think that in high school, this type of stuff happens because we are in a place where we're figuring ourselves out. What do we want to do? Like, what is our dream? What is our passion? And when you choose certain things over your relationship, it can get tricky. But I don't know what you would expect. If you look back at yourself in high school, like, what did you expect? The ups and downs of the relationship, that's normal. I don't know if Patience's dream is crystal clear to me, just even as a viewer, I don't know if it's it's clear to me yet, but she does love the relationship and you have people like that as well, who are just so embedded in their relationships that they forget about their own dreams. I don't want Coop to be that. At all.

High school is about the trickiest time to be in a relationship.

Exactly. I think when we are there, when we're in high school, we don't see that. We really think this is it. We're going to be together forever. Before you know it, you're 30, and this person's nowhere to be found.

All American airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.

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