The Shop
GovernorGavin Newsom onThe Shop with LeBron James and Maverick Carter in 2019
Genre	Talk show
Created by	Paul Rivera
Starring	LeBron James Maverick Carter
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	30
Production
Executive producers	LeBron James Maverick Carter Peter Nelson Rick Bernstein
Producers	Kevin McGrail Brandon Riley Rob Roediger
Running time	30 minutes
Production company	Frehand
Original release
Network	HBO (seasons 1–4) YouTube (season 5–present)
Release	August 28, 2018 (2018-08-28) – present

The Shop: Uninterrupted, or simplyThe Shop, is an American televisiontalk show created by Paul Rivera. It stars professional basketball starLeBron James and businessmanMaverick Carter, who alongside guests have conversations and debates in a barbershop. The series premiered onHBO in the United States on August 28, 2018.^[1] On February 28, 2022, the series was renewed for a fifth season and moved toYouTube.^[2] In 2021, the series won a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Edited Sports Series.

James spoke on howThe Shop became an idea saying, "when I was a kid, being in barbershops meant listening to adults talk about sports, clothing, politics, music, everything happened in the shop. It was so real and so candid—no one had a sense of, well I can't be myself here."^[3] Randy Mims and Paul Rivera, both business partners of James' and Carter's, first proposedThe Shop.^[3]

InFebruary 2016, during the NBA'sAll-Star Weekend, the first iteration ofThe Shop was filmed in aToronto-based barbershop for the Uninterrupted website.^[3]The following year, another episode ofThe Shop was filmed in aNew Orleans–based barbershop.^[4] James and Carter were joined byGolden State Warriorspower forwardDraymond Green,Atlanta rapper2 Chainz,Grey's Anatomy starJesse Williams, formerNew York KnicksAll-StarCharles Oakley, and businessmanSteve Stoute.^[4] Stoute moderated the group's discussion, which notably generated James detailing how his mother did not want him to return to theCleveland Cavaliers in 2014.^[4][5] The filming premiered on the Uninterrupted platform on June 9, 2017, coinciding with Game 4 of theNBA Finals between James' Cavaliers and Green's Warriors.^[5] The New Orleans episode wasoptioned byESPN as a one-off.^[3]

Following the New Orleans episode, talks withHBO began in earnest.^[3] HBO then ordered a handful of episodes ofThe Shop, with the episode order being left vague due to James' primary focus on his basketball career.^[3] The deal with HBO did not include airing the Toronto or New Orleans episodes; the first episode for HBO was filmed inWest Hollywood's Barber Surgeons Guild, in July 2018.^[3][6] The episode guest starredNew York Giantswide receiverOdell Beckham Jr., rapperSnoop Dogg,Los Angeles SparksforwardCandace Parker, comedianJon Stewart,New Orleans Saintsrunning backAlvin Kamara, and Green, alongside James and Carter.^[3] The episode premiered on HBO on August 28.^[1] Further episodes aired later throughout the year.^[7] The second episode was filmed in aWashington, D.C. hair salon, which houses a separate cuttery.^[8] This episode is notable for the guest appearance from rapperDrake, who spoke on the personal troubles between him and fellow musicianKanye West. Drake was honest and offered insight to the fight that normally would not have been made known.^[9] The third and fourth episodes were also filmed in Los Angeles,^[10] with the latter notable for wide receiverAntonio Brown publicly musing on his dissatisfaction with his role on thePittsburgh Steelers, as well as with his heated relationship with quarterbackBen Roethlisberger.^[11]

The second season ofThe Shop premiered on March 1, 2019,^[12] with the premiere episode being filmed inCharlotte, North Carolina, during the NBA's2019 All-Star Weekend.^[13]

The fourth season premiered on May 28, 2021.^[14]

Following the series' HBO premiere, Haley O'Shaughnessy ofThe Ringer wrote: "The setting creates a very personal facade, an opportunity to speak on fame and kids and race openly. The viewer is in on the conversation, but isn'tin the conversation. Opinions on hot-topic issues that LeBron's addressed before aren't delivered like a sermon, which are more likely to fall flat. He's chatting with people he respects. And you feel like part of that group."^[15] O'Shaughnessy added that, "The Shop is another platform, but it isn't a pedestal. It's not a postgame press conference, where power dynamics are heavily skewed. It's an HBO show that attempts to keep a level playing field for everyone involved."^[15] Following the second episode,The Ringer's Micah Peters opined, "[The Shop is] really good TV––they sip wine, they offer a side of themselves rarely seen in public, andLeBron James says swear words. Even the color palette is spare and direct. This, like most barbershops, is a space reserved strictly forreal talk."^[18] Rashad Grove ofThe Source wrote on the series' authenticity of the Black barbershop experience, "LeBron onThe Shop is showing the world what really goes down at the Black barbershop. The conversations are raw and authentic over many glasses of wine."^[19]

Meredith Blake of theLos Angeles Times published a lukewarm review of the first episode, writing, "Though the effort to capture the vibrance and tell-it-like-it-is spirit of the African American barbershop met with slightly mixed results in the first episode,The Shop is more than worth a return visit," and adding "stylish black-and-white photographs of guests arriving at the shop serve as act breaks and enhance the show's documentary feel. But the choppy editing sometimes removes context from the conversation, offering little sense of how one subject flows to the next."^[20]

Billy Haisley ofDeadspin wrote a more critical review ofThe Shop's first episode, questioning its candidness. Haisley referred to other outlets' comments on the episode, writing," Amazing:Slate, theWashington Post, andHBO all agree that an edited, literally filtered TV program created, produced, and starring a world-famous athlete with a notoriously and meticulously maintained image is best described as 'unfiltered.'The Ringer and theSporting News at least consulted a thesaurus before copyingThe Shop's press release language, writing, respectfully, that the episode was 'honest' and 'candid.'"^[21] Haisley added, "The point here isn't that the things LeBron and Co. say inThe Shop are insincere or fake or anything of the sort [...] Rather, the point is that the things said in The Shop are calculated, risk-free, decidedly filtered, stated for the predominant purpose of bolstering LeBron's brand. It's to position LeBron as a bold truth-teller without him having to actually tell any bold truths. And it should be treated as such."^[21] Carrie Battan ofThe New Yorker wrote positively of the show's candidness, however, commenting: "Theoretically,The Shop should have been yet another affirmation of our worst suspicions—that we would only ever get to see our superheroes in sanitized, strictly controlled ways. But James has offered a potent rebuttal to the argument that celebrities can't make interesting, revelatory content about themselves and their colleagues."^[22]

Battan wrote a positive review ofThe Shop, following its first season, as she opined positively on the series' setting "designed to generate the sense of candor, camaraderie, and intimacy that happens inside African-American barbershops." Battan conceded "[she does] not operate under the delusion that this show is a purely unfiltered, candid, and unprecedentedly revealing look at the assembled stars. There are plenty of platitudes and generalities being proffered here," but opined thatThe Shop "does exactly what the best celebrity profiles have always aspired to do: delight, surprise, inform."^[22]

Due to the series airing during James' basketball career, sports media outlets naturally coveredThe Shop, focusing on segments that dealt with James' presence in basketball. The ongoings of James'first season as a member of theLos Angeles Lakers lent themselves to discussion topics on the series, which led to further coverage by sports media. For example,Anthony Davis was the subject of rumors regarding an attempt to trade him to the Lakers at the time of his appearance onThe Shop.^[12] The series also chronicled James' and fellow Lakers teammateLonzo Ball's reactions toMagic Johnson stepping down from his Lakers front office role during the 2019 offseason; this was also noted by sports media outlets.^[23][24]

• The Shop onHBO—The official website for the series in the United States.
• The Shop atIMDb—A user-generated database of information related to the series.

• 2010s American black television series
• 2010s American television talk shows
• 2016 web series debuts
• 2017 web series endings
• 2018 American television series debuts
• 2020s YouTube series
• American English-language television shows
• HBO original programming
• Television series by SpringHill Entertainment
• Television series by Uninterrupted
• Television shows filmed in Los Angeles
• Television shows filmed in New Orleans
• Television shows filmed in North Carolina
• Works by LeBron James

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from March 2025