Netflix is debuting a new reality TV show next month, and it’s basically the IRL version of A Star Is Born. On Thursday (October 11), the streaming giant dropped the trailer for this new show, which is called Westside and follows nine aspiring singer-songwriters as they attempt to pursue their dreams of stardom.
In the clip, the celebrity hopefuls alternate between belting their hearts out, butting heads over their competing egos, and casually dropping one-liners like, “We’re going to mine our lives for the truths we want to share.” Yup. It goes deep!
You may recognize some of the faces of Westside. According to Entertainment Weekly, the cast includes Pia Toscano, who appeared on the 10th season of American Idol and placed ninth, as well as Taz Zavala, Arika Gluck, James Byous, Caitlin Ary, Leo Gallo, Alexandra Kay, Austin Kolbe, and Sean Patrick Murray, all of whom have already released a few songs on their own, to minor success. On the show, they’ll put out at least 18 songs, per EW, likely a mix of solo singles and group collabs.
Watch the trailer for yourself, below:
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Westside starts streaming on Netflix November 9. If you’re already hungry for more of this Glee meets The Hills goodness, you can stream one of the songs featured in the trailer, “We Are the Ones,” right now.
This isn’t the only music-inspired movie or TV show premiering this year. You also have Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddy Mercury biopic, to look forward to in November, as well as Vox Lux, the explosive indie movie coming out in December where Natalie Portman plays a Gaga-esque pop star.
The show is really living up to its name, isn’t it? Netflix has renewed its divisive comedy series Insatiable for a second season, according to a press release.
The series, which stars former Disney Channel star Debby Ryan in the leading role, follows a plus-size, unpopular high schooler nicknamed “Fatty Patty” who loses a significant amount of weight over a summer (from having her jaw wired shut), and when she returns for the new school year, seeks revenge on everyone who’s ever been mean to her. Upon its release, Insatiable generated a significant amount of controversy, with many viewers accusing it of fat-shaming. The use of a fatsuit in flashback scenes was also widely contested.
Despite the backlash the show received, Ryan believed the show succeeded in what it set out to do, and that the fatsuit was an integral part of developing Patty’s identity. “There was a point where [the showrunner] and I are like, ‘If at any point this is funny, if at any point people laugh, we’re not doing it.’ We’re not doing the show that we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to portray an origin story. We’re trying to showcase that,” Ryan old Teen Vogue last month. “We knew that this conversation needed to be had. We knew that this societal brokenness needed to be addressed, but we didn’t know how badly it needed to be addressed. My friend, a few days before the trailer hit, in reference to something else, said, ‘The size of the reaction is the size of the wound,’ and it stayed with me.”
Unsurprisingly, the social media reaction has been just as divisive for the show’s renewal. Below, see the split reactions.
This summer, the top movies at the box office—Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Deadpool 2—share a lot of similarities: They’re all sequels, they all fall in the “action” genre (yes, even the animated Incredibles), and they all were directed by men. Meanwhile, over on Netflix, one of the season’s biggest hits was Like Father, a quiet dramedy about a woman (Kristen Bell) reuniting with her estranged father (Kelsey Grammer) written and directed by Lauren Miller Rogen. “No one wanted to make it. Then Netflix came along,” Miller Rogen tells us. “They were so supportive and didn’t care that I was a first time [director].”
Netflix rarely, if ever, reveals numbers—but, according to a tweet from star (and Miller Rogen’s husband) Seth Rogen, Like Father was the streaming service’s number one movie in over 100 countries on its opening weekend. To date, it has more than 10 million streams. That’s a huge success for a first-time director—so, we asked Miller Rogen to tell us more.
I saw Like Father was Netflix’s number one movie in over 100 countries its opening weekend. Is that true?
Lauren Miller Rogen: Yes, it is! It’s the first time Netflix has released a number about the streaming, which is pretty awesome. The first weekend over 10 million accounts watched it—so if more than one person was sitting there, which likely was the case, it’s even more than that. When you think about [that compared to] a movie in a theater, it’s crazy the amount of people that watched it the first weekend.
It’s massive. How has the reception been? Has it really hit you yet?
LMR: You know, it’s up and downs. It’s like releasing my child into the world and having everyone judge it. Most people have been amazing. It’s very rare to say this, but people have been so nice on Twitter! [Laughs] It’s been so nice to have people say, “I laughed and I cried!” I don’t want to make people cry in a bad way, but I think it’s cry in a cathartic way. That was our goal.
It feels significant that a female director was behind such a big hit. Do you think this will help get more seats at the table?
LMR: I hope so. There are some amazing women filmmakers doing big things, like Wonder Woman and Patty Jenkins. She directed one of the biggest movies last year, and that’s amazing. I just think overall, there’s this amazing energy behind empowering women, hearing their voices, and having them be storytellers, directors, and producers. That in turn creates an authenticity in female characters.
Of course, there have been amazing portrayals of women in the past—but having a female storyteller, a female writer, and a female director telling a story like ours, in which a woman goes through quite an emotional journey, was important to me and Kristen. We [wanted to] use our authentic female voices to put in what we felt like were a real woman’s emotion and anger, which I think makes men uncomfortable sometimes. There’s such an amazing effort to do that in movies and TV these days, and I hope that I continue to be a part of it.
LMR: It’s so weird because now I feel so confident about it. It was similar with acting; it took me a really long time to say I wanted to be an actor. I think I just wasn’t confident in doing something that’s out of the ordinary. I’m from a small town, and it took me a long time to feel comfortable enough to say, “These are the things I want to do.” Plus, the thought of going to a woman who I really admire to direct my story was exciting. [Producer] Anders Bard asked if I wanted to do it, because two of the women we had gone to said, “Why are you sending this to me? You should do it!” When I said yes, he was like, “OK, great. You’re doing it.”
There was never a question of backing down when we faced the many no’s we faced. It was just like, “Let’s do this. I believe in you.” I had directed a number of short projects and had quite a vision for this story, so once we made that decision there was no looking back. I guess I had to go through those years of insecurity in order to get to the other side of it, but I can’t really say there was a reason why—maybe it was a combination of the industry and never having the personal confidence. But now, things are changing. And I’m happy to own it.
It’s amazing that you took this script to other women and they pushed you to do it yourself. You don’t hear that happening often.
LMR: No! I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t faced a lot of sexism, but that’s not to say I haven’t felt doors that weren’t quite as open to me as they maybe were for men in my position. I felt it from women sometimes as well. Now, we’re building each other up. That’s changing too.
It’s nice there can be a seat for everybody, not just one. You mentioned that you had a vision for Like Father. What was it?
LMR: I really wanted to make a movie that felt real and grounded, even if the situation was candy-colored or slightly out of the ordinary. I wanted to make a movie that was warm and funny, but also emotional and sad. That’s what life is, right? I wanted to capture that and set out to make a dramedy. It’s a movie that will make you laugh, but also makes you feel and think.
Was it hard to get this movie made? As you said, it’s a dramedy, but in Hollywood most summer blockbusters are superhero movies and action films.
LMR: Yeah, it was. [Laughs] As you touched on, studios aren’t in the risk-taking business. That’s why we have all these sequels and superhero movies, which I love, don’t get me wrong. But they don’t take chances on first timers, and comedies these days are much harder to get made, especially when you don’t have cast attached. We didn’t. We had me and my script. I met with so many people who all loved the script, but no one wanted to make it. Then Netflix came along. They were so supportive of me as a director and didn’t care that I was a first timer; it never was a question. They cared that I had a good script. They became really good partners who believed in me, which is more than I can say for anyone else.
PHOTO: Emily Aragones
Well, you obviously got a great cast eventually with Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer. How did they come on board?
LMR: We were in the process of sending it around, and I happened to be on the set of Neighbors 2, where Kelsey plays Chloë Grace Moretz’s dad. He was so funny. And I was like, “Oh, maybe he’s Harry!” When it was time to cast Harry, I sat down with Kelsey, and he cried in the first five minutes while talking about one of the scenes. I was like, “OK, we’re done! This is Harry.” It’s amazing. He’s funny, he’s emotional, and he had a personal story where one of his daughters wasn’t in his life for a long time. He was so sincere in how he talked about the character and his relationship to it.
As for Kristen, we have a mutual friend and we had met…kind of. So when we sent the script to her, I called our mutual friend and was like, “Hey, can you tell her I’m a normal human being? And she should please read my script?” Someone like Kristen gets scripts all the time, you know? Everyone wants her in their things!
I was fortunate that my friend made this call, and Kristen and I instantly clicked. It was like, let’s be two women who have found balance between our careers and personal lives and know what it’s like to work for that. Let’s create a character who feels real and authentic to us. That’s what we bonded over immediately. It was exactly who I wanted to find in my Rachel. She’s very three-dimensional—she’s angry and sad, but also funny and forgives and learns. Kristen’s really smart and hardworking. She just dove right in and brought so much of herself, her real self, to it.
Was there a favorite moment you had filming?
LMR: We shot in such an extraordinary places and such extraordinary ways, so shooting this did feel very special and magical. My favorite/hardest scene was on the top of a waterfall, the first time Kristen and Kelsey’s characters really connect with each other. It was very slippery, so there was a lot of falling, and we had to get all of our equipment across a waterfall on a pulley system. It was hot and humid; and while it looked beautiful, the conditions were not great. However, it was the most extraordinary day ever because we were in this place that was so crazy beautiful doing this thing with people who were so good at their jobs.
And Kelsey and Kristen, in this environment full of distractions and insanity, delivered this performance that’s so real and moving, so heartbreaking and beautiful. I was so proud. It was a really special experience. I can still remember so clearly sitting on this rock, holding my monitor, just crying and being so grateful this was happening. I was so moved by what they were doing and what everyone was doing. It was magical.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is one of this fall’s most-anticipated shows. Based on a comic series, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is said to be nothing like the 1996 series Sabrina the Teenage Witch starring Melissa Joan Hart—but how so? The show doesn’t premiere until October 2018, but thankfully, Netflix just teased some photos and new details. Here’s everything concrete we know so far about your next TV obsession.
1. It will premiere on October 26, 2018. Just in time for Halloween, natch. The show’s been green-lit for two, 20-episode seasons.
2. It’s created and executive produced by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the brain behind Riverdale. So expect a dark, edgy approach to the material.
PHOTO: Netflix
3. Kiernan Shipka is playing Sabrina Spellman. You probably recognize her from Mad Men, but she also played Bette Davis’ daughter in the FX series Feud: Bette and Joan.
4. This version is way scarier than the 1996 series starring Melissa Joan Hart. “Tonally in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, this adaptation finds Sabrina wrestling to reconcile her dual nature—half-witch, half-mortal—while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family, and the daylight world humans inhabit,” reads Netflix’s press release about the series. Netflix also calls the show a “dark coming-of-age story that traffics in horror, the occult and, of course, witchcraft.”
PHOTO: Netflix
5. Several of the cast members have already been announced. Kiernan Shipka plays the lead, as we said. Miranda Otto and Lucy Davis are stepping into Aunt Zelda and Aunt Hilda’s shoes, respectively. Ross Lynch is playing Harvey. Other cast members include: Michelle Gomez, Chance Perdomo, Jaz Sinclair, Richard Coyle, Tati Gabrielle, Adeline Rudolph, Abigail Cowen, Lachlan Watson, Bronson Pinchot, and Gavin Leatherwood.
There’s controversy brewing around Netflix‘s new show Insatiable, and it hasn’t even premiered yet. The series—starring Debby Ryan and Dallas Roberts—is marketed as a satire and centers on Patty (Ryan), a high schooler bullied for her weight who has her jaw wired shut after a man assaults her. The incident causes Patty to lose weight in just a few months, and shortly after she starts exacting revenge on the bullies who tormented her. “Now I can be the ‘former fatty’ who turned into a brain or an athlete or a princess,” Patty says in a voice-over during the trailer before saying out loud, “No, I’d rather have revenge.”
As you can imagine, based on this premise, Insatiable isn’t receiving the warmest response. Hundreds of people took to Twitter to criticize the show’s trailer, alleging it has both fat-shaming and eating disorder undertones. “[I] suffered from anorexia for three years of my life, and if I had seen this type of show back then? It would’ve spurred me on even more,” one person commented on Twitter. “As an actual 20-year-old woman who was fat my whole life and struggled with bullying then just lost all the weight for myself and well-being, this is not OK. Do better please,” wrote another.
Writer and body-positivity activist Roxane Gay had this to say about Insatiable‘s trailer: “Ahhh yes, a fat girl could never stand up for herself while fat and of course she has to be assaulted and have her mouth wired shut before she becomes her best self, her skinny self. Good to know!”
Check out the trailer—and some more reactions—for yourself, below:
Both Ryan and Insatiable‘s creator, Lauren Gussis, responded to the show’s backlash on Twitter. “We’re not in the business of fat shaming. We’re out to turn a sharp eye on broken, harmful systems that equate thinness with worth,” Ryan wrote, continuing. “I hope fans will wait and watch the show before passing judgment. If you go for this ride, I think you’ll recognize both yourself and the things that make you mad about our fractured and beauty-obsessed culture.”
Gussis said something similar. “This show is a cautionary tale about how damaging it can be to believe the outsides are more important—to judge without going deeper. Please give the show a chance,” she wrote.
Alyssa Milano, who has a supporting role on the show, also tweeted a response. “We are not shaming Patty. We are addressing (through comedy) the damage that occurs from fat shaming. I hope that clears it up,” she wrote.
But it doesn’t seem like these statements are appeasing critics. There’s now a petition on Change.org to stop the release of Insatiable, and it’s garnered more than 120,000 signatures.
“For so long, the narrative has told women and young impressionable girls that in order to be popular, have friends, to be desirable for the male gaze, and to some extent be a worthy human…that we must be thin,” the petition reads.
It continues, “The toxicity of this series is bigger than just this one particular series. This is not an isolated case, but part of a much larger problem that I can promise you every single woman has faced in her life, sitting somewhere on the scale of valuing their worth on their bodies, to be desirable objects for the male gaze. That is exactly what this series does. It perpetuates not only the toxicity of diet culture, but the objectification of women’s bodies. This series needs to be canceled.”
Netflix hasn’t released an official statement on this controversy yet, but we’ll update this post when and if it does. Insatiable is expected to arrive on the streaming platform August 10.
The series is set in 1843 and based on Atwood’s fictional account of the real-life case of Grace Marks (played by Sarah Gadon), an Irish immigrant who was sent to jail for 30 years for the murder of her Canadian employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. But though the series takes place nearly 200 years ago, there are plenty of timely issues surrounding Grace’s situation. “Grace is a white, Irish immigrant, and while we don’t think of this as attracting the same prejudice, the Irish were regarded as less than human, which is what happens to every immigrant group in this country,” director Mary Harron tells us. “It’s a story about immigration, it’s a story about young women and the sexual danger that they find themselves in.”
Anna Paquin, who plays housekeeper Nancy Montgomery, adds, “The whole story is creepy and terrifying. We are conditioned to want to know what happened, but I love storytelling that doesn’t actually wrap it up for you.”
The six episode series also features a star-turning performance from Gadon, who leapt at the chance to work with Harron and writer/producer Sarah Polley. “I heard she was adapting the novel, and I knew it was going to be a huge opportunity,” she explains. “I knew I would probably have to fight for it because so many women worship at the altar of Sarah Polley and want to work with her.” The result? A perfect match that will leave you wanting more. Here, Gadon explains why.
You’ve said that playing this role was a total mindfuck. When you went in for the audition, were you terrified about actually getting the role?
Sarah Gadon: When I auditioned for the project, they asked me to prepare many scenes in the accent. I thought, “How am I going to do this?” But I just worked through it, and then we had this session where we worked for hours through versions of the character. Then I left, and they called me a few days later and said, “Can you do it again? Can you do it just one more way?” I thought, “Ugh! Really? We did this for hours already!” But I said OK and went in and did another version. Then I thought, “Oh yeah, they were really right about that. We didn’t do that [before].”
What did they want?
Sarah: I think it was to play the danger of one of the scenes we were doing. And so we did it, and then they offered me the part. I thought, “That’s a real signifier of what this role will be. It will be endless.” I was so excited to get the role, but then the fear set in of what I knew I had to do to prepare for it, and, of course, the expectations that Margaret would have, Sarah would have, and Mary would have. I felt a tremendous amount of pressure.
PHOTO: Sabrina Lantos/Netflix
Had you read the book before?
Sarah: I hadn’t. I picked it up before I met with Mary and Sarah and thought I should read some of this before my meeting. I read the whole thing because it’s so compelling. I think there was a huge hysteria surrounding it because Grace was part of the working class in a time where the class system was very strung, so the notion of this young girl murdering somebody above her station was shocking and horrifying to people of that time. And then there’s the fact that she was this young, beautiful girl who committed these horrific crimes. She was kind of catapulted into fame. She was made infamous and was this icon of terror. That was something that we really thought a lot about, which was this sensationalized true crime.
What do you love most about the show?
Sarah: I love that it’s a real exploration of female subjectivity. It takes all of these really iconic images that we’ve seen over and over again throughout history, film, photography. They are images that are very familiar to us because they keep reappearing, and they are images of a woman looking in a mirror, a woman with an apple, a woman in a veil. These are very powerful images. The reason why I love the show so much is that its subverts all of those images…these images that have predominantly created by men, and it says, a woman looks into the mirror. This is not about female beauty, this is not about an emblem of beauty, about vanity. It’s about Grace being acutely aware of that image and taking it on…taking on all the projections of who she should be. Sitting comfortably in them and making you feel uncomfortable, and then her inviting you in, and saying we are now going to explore what it is to be a woman, beyond this superficial understanding of her. I love that.
It’s the same with the scene with the apple. It’s saying I’m dangerous, but I’m also all of these other things at the same time. I think it’s so powerful that she doesn’t eat the apple in front of Simon. She waits until he leaves, and it’s kind of, it’s not about you, it’s about me. It’s the same with the veil moment, which is this idea of woman in a veil representing country, representing religion, representing patriarchy. It’s this moment where Grace is able to, in a very unsettling and terrifying way, explore her deepest sexual desires, her anxieties, her opinions of others. These moments excite me as an audience member because they are in direct conversation with all of these ideas of what women should be. It’s powerful to watch that—and exciting. By the end of it, it feels deeply personal because it’s very much a conversation of what identity is.
PHOTO: Sabrina Lantos/Netflix
There are so many underlying themes in the show. Is there a specific topic you’d like viewers to think about more?
Sarah: I think in order to understand where we are right now, it’s important to look back and say, “Where have we come from? And why have we come from there?” When you’re thinking about issues that are at the forefront of everyone’s minds right now, like immigration or gender politics, the show is a very interesting exploration of where we’ve come from. It helps us understand things like, why are females competitive with each other? Is that inherited from this notion that a male’s attention was your meal ticket and your survival? How have we taken that female notion of competition that was created through this extremely patriarchal structure about life and death? And how have we untangled that and arrived where we are now? So, there are lots of things to take away. That example that I just said really exists in Grace’s relationship with Nancy, and it made me understand that idea of competition and where that came from in a way that I never thought about before.
How did this experience change you?
Sarah: I think I was very haunted when I read the book by Grace and her story and moved by her, and I still am. I often think about how Grace didn’t really have a mother. She didn’t really have strong female relationships in her life. She spent the majority of her life isolated. And by way of playing her and embodying her, I’ve come in contact with some of the most powerful female relationships I’ve ever experienced. I wonder if in some way that’s a kind of retribution for Grace Marks.
What was it like working with all these amazing women at the helm of this project? How was that different from other projects you’ve worked on?
Sarah: In some ways, it wasn’t really different at all. Mary and Sarah were extremely demanding of me. They had extremely high expectations, so they weren’t necessarily nurturing in that way. [Laughs] But one thing that stands out is they were very inclusive of me throughout every step of the process. They valued my opinion, and they asked for it often. They were so inclusive in a way that I had never experienced before on a film.
Because you said this was the hardest role that you had taken on, where did you find the confidence each day to attack this?
Sarah: [Laughs] I think I really found it in Mary [Harron] and Sarah [Polley], because they just believe in me so wholeheartedly. I respected them and looked up to them my whole life, so letting them down was just never going to be an option. I think that that was the real driving force. But the other thing that really grounded me throughout the process was that I was playing a real person, and I wanted to honor this person’s memory. That was a real source of inspiration and confidence for me, that I was going to honor this woman who never had a moment in her life where she was honored.
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