“I have my circle, and my friends always hold me up and hold me down, you know what I mean?” Hodge says. “Whenever I see stereotypes about the fact that we, as a community, are far removed from love, and from vulnerability and openness ... yes, every culture has pockets of certain things that apply, the base of our culture, how we have survived, especially in this country, is family. It’s bonding, it’s love. We protect each other.”

When the Cross novels were first written, the fact that Patterson is a white author of a black character was not an issue. Like James Clavell, who wrote Shogun, authorship and culture were not interrogated in the same way that they are in 2024. Clavell’s Shogun was recently rebooted with enormous success, and Patterson’s Cross novels remain bestsellers.

The issue of authorship and culture is perhaps not as selective as it seems, but it does seem nuanced, I suggest to Hodge. “We’re dealing with a different timeframe, and different time period, and expectation,” Hodge says. “Certainly, it would be controversial today, only based on the merit of honesty and respect for the culture.

“This adaptation of 2024, the authenticity, the roots, the honesty that you get is from [showrunner] Ben Watkins,” Hodge says. “Ben made it a standard to say, ‘look, this character, he’s going to be black, he’s going to live a black experience’, which means we have to have conversations that some people may be afraid to address or approach because they don’t know how to.”

“Ben knows how to relay that in a way where people can see the other side and understand these are real, lived experiences. And when he approached James, the great thing about James is that he said, you know what, of course, do your thing, hands off, I’m going to let you do your thing.

“I think that is great because you have to be able to have your work informed by the root source,” Hodge adds. “If you’re trying to build anything great, it will always take a team, and due to the humility of Mr Patterson and the brilliance of Ben Watkins, that’s where you meet in the middle, and you get the true nature of Cross.”

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Though Hodge does not recall the specifics, he and Watkins met when they were both teenagers, playing in a basketball league in Los Angeles. “I was like 14, 15, but I was so focused on not looking stupid on the court because I couldn’t play well. I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t make a basket to save my life. I was always a defensive player. I could block, but dear God, don’t give me the rock.

“Fast forward to now, I think we met again when I was 36, and that’s a good bit of time, right? But my first impression of Ben off top from reading his work was that he has a brilliant mind, and he’s a very smart, strategic writer,” Hodge says. “On top of being talented, he also understands how to take grand topics, issues, and piece them all together in a way that’s really palatable and digestible.

“So I knew that this brother was truly impressive,” Hodge says. “And then, when we talked, we sat down for honestly a couple of hours, just talking about life, and mental health, and therapy, and where we were as men in that particular point in our lives. And really, it came down to, I think, there was a sort of brotherhood that was building out of that because I told him straight up, you’re going to be my teacher.”

Cross screens on Amazon Prime from November 14.

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