LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s barbershop-style talk show, "The Shop," has been picked up by HBO and is set to debut on August 28 at 11pm ET.
Each episode of "The Shop" will consist of a number of different celebrities talking candidly in a barber shop while the cameras roll, with the final product being cut down to a 30-minute episode.
“This show is real, it’s candid and it’s the essence of conversation,” James tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And we know with social media and text being the way people communicate, the form of conversation, actually talking, is kind of lost art.”
“When I was a kid, being in barbershops meant listening to adults talk about sports, clothing, politics, music, everything happened in the shop,” says James. “It was so real and so candid; no one had a sense of, well I can’t be myself here. That’s how The Shop became an idea.”
“We’ll do it as frequently as the conversation warrants,” says Peter Nelson, executive VP of HBO Sports. “It’s LeBron’s baby, so he very much wants to do it. And he wants to do it as much as possible.”
In the series premiere, LeBron chops it up with a number of high profile athletes including Odell Beckham Jr., Alvin Kamara, Candace Parker and Draymond Green, as well as Snoop Dogg and John Stewart.
Check out the first glimpse of "The Shop" in the videos embedded below, and catch the series premiere on Tuesday, August 28 at 11pm ET.