The writing team behind Atlanta created one of fall's highest-rated shows and managed to squeeze in storylines about drug tests, baby urine and a transracial teenager called Harrison.

Jamal Olori, Stephen Glover and Stefani Robinson, along with Donald Glover and Fam Udeorji, wrote Atlanta and they discussed some of the inspirations behind the show and where its most

talked about moments came from. THE JUSTIN BIEBER EPISODE CONFUSED FX STEPHEN GLOVER: I remember when we turned in the script to FX and they emailed Donald back and said: "Is Justin

Bieber actually going to be in this?" JAMAL OLORI: We just started laughing so hard. Initially, we were fighting about so many things, we had a first-time director [Hiro Murai] and we

it once in a while. They're not just going to give you the keys and say, "OK, good luck." [FX] puts out shows, shows fail and they're worried. Once we shot the pilot and

they saw the pilot people started getting really excited for it. Once everyone understood that it was going to be weird, it was OK. ON CREATING VANESSA STEFANI ROBINSON: We went out of our

way to make sure every single character was real, but that episode was important because it was representative of black women and their experience in Atlanta. Everybody had conversations

about what was the value of a black woman in the United States? That's a really good example of presenting both sides of the story in the right way. SG: We like to leave things open to

interpretation. The Van character represents a black woman and we see her in situations and see her react to get a sense what the life of a black woman is like. SR: Not in the context of a

man as well. You often see that in television. It was important to see her do things by herself. ON WRITING AS IF THEY WERE GOING TO BE CANCELLED AFTER ONE SEASON JO: We always had this

thing where we said we were going to get cancelled first season because our shit is going to be too outrageous. And then maybe later on everyone will go back and be like, "Damn, this

show was actually good", like a cult classic. Like Family Guy, at first it came out and then got cancelled but it came back and it's still running today. PAPER BOI WAS ALMOST

CALLED WHITE BOI JO: He was actually going to be called White Boi initially. We were playing around with different rap names and we thought, "Why isn't there a White Boi who just

raps about cocaine?" That's all anyone raps about now, so why hasn't anyone done that? Then we found out there actually is a White Boi [Chris 'White Boy' Riley]. ON

WRITING BLACK CHARACTERS LIVING NORMAL LIVES SR: You are conditioned to see black people to get shot or hooked on something. It's really fun to write a show where you get to see black

people living life every day. We all live life every day, and, knock on wood, I've never been shot. SG: People feel like they understand black existence a lot more than they actually

do. JO: The media has portrayed black people in a certain way and if you think about a black person its immediately scary or one stereotype. But we're all different. We used to joke

about a white person having a black friend and they'd immediately think every black person is like that one friend. ON THE B.A.N. EPISODE AND TACKLING PC CULTURE SG: Have you ever seen

the Cam'ron, Dame Dash and Bill O'Reilly interview? There's a trope in TV: here's an issue with black people, so let's get a random black person who is not really

qualified to speak on this subject against someone on the other side of that who is super qualified and super into it, and let's have them battle. JO: You end up seeing that this person

is a rapper, but they're actually smart. Oh, this person is actually good with words. SG: Debra Holt represents that person who is super qualified, and they'll book someone on to

talk about African American studies and it's some white lady from Ohio. This is the most qualified person to talk about this? People don't have real dialogues, even on the

internet, which is supposed to be a place where you're able to say whatever you want – you're not allowed. If somebody is like "I don't like this", then immediately

it's "dislike, dislike, get out of here", we don't even want to talk about this. SR: We're definitely not interested in being Sesame Street. A lot of people get

pushed into "what is the correct thing? What do we need to say about this topic?" TV to me or the internet has become so elementary school. SG: People are complex too. In Atlanta

or the south there could be a super homosexual man who is also super religious in a Baptist church, and he's black too. He's living multiple complex situations. ON THOSE

COMMERCIALS JO: In Atlanta you just see Dodge Chargers everywhere, and they're driven by the dope boys. Everyone knows it and it's like a part of Atlanta. We didn't know if

the companies would let us do the commercials or if we'd get into trouble for it. Donald thought about it and technically we can, but nobody does it. We ended up pitching it to FX and

they wanted to do it. SG: The show is about subtlety and things people don't understand about black culture. You see black commercials on black channels and black advertising, but some

people who never see a certain haircare commercial and they're are just subtle differences. Some of the commercials we did are essentially just commercials. SR: We were thinking how

weird it must seem for some people to see a commercial with only black people in it. I think we were coming at it from an angle that this is going to look weird and it's going to look

off to a larger audience. JO: And people aren't going to understand why it feels weird. They're shot like regular commercials, but you're like something is different but you

can't tell and it's literally that it's all black people.