Netflix‘s upcoming Sierra Burgess is a Loser has garnered attention and accolades (including my own) ahead of it’s September 7 premiere and a good part of that is thanks to producer and writer Lindsey Beer.
High school rom coms are nothing new, but Sierra Burgess is a Loser is something unique. If you’ve ever felt like a “loser” in high school, there’s an authenticity to this story that resonates. It feels like something we’ve lived.
It was the first thing I asked her about when we chatted recently.
What inspired the story?
A lot of things came together to inspire it. In terms of the actual characters, I drew a lot of things from my own life. Sierra and Veronica… there are things based on both women that I took from my own life and my experience in High School and kind of that age when you are asked to define yourself at a time when other people are really defining you.
I just remember so clearly the pressure of trying to get into the right college and wanting to be my own person and not just follow in the parents’ footsteps and not just do what my friends were doing. All that kind of stuff was definitely very much rooted in personal experience.
Cyrano… very much played a big part in my High School experience and my college recommendations, I read the play in French class, in French, obviously, at the time, and then we had a big test on it. My answers impressed my French teacher and he ended up attaching the test to my college recommendations.
And then I kind of forgot about it for a while. I had just moved to LA to become a screenwriter and I wrote a bunch of dark fantasy things and my dad, a very sweet man but also a very honest man, kind of came out of his room pulling at his face after reading my latest opus. He looks at me and goes, “Can you just write something that isn’t offensive or weird?”
Then that night, as it would happen, we went to go see a play and it was Cyrano. I was sitting there thinking “I could write something based on this that wouldn’t be weird or offensive”, but also it just felt so right for retelling. It hadn’t been retold in a big way since Roxanne. Also, it just seemed to me like, given innovations in technology, there were ways to tell the story that were just so apt for dating in the modern era. It also felt to me like the themes and predicaments just applied so much more poignantly to women. It was a character that we haven’t really seen before portrayed by a woman where they were confident and smart and defined themselves by their wits and not by their looks. The whole thing just kind of sank in… in one moment, like “A-ha! This is the story I need to write and could have personal significance as well.” That’s where it comes from.
People have talked about the body positivity aspect of it. I also feel like, in a lot of ways, it covers more than that.
Absolutely. Sierra as a character is not just dealing with not looking like Veronica. She’s also dealing with feeling like she’s not good enough to get into college, it feels like the world is conspiring in all these different ways, mounting up making her feel like she’s not good enough. Then we see other characters, like Veronica who, maybe on the outside, seems perfect and some people would be jealous and want to be her. We see how much she’s struggling with her own insecurities. I definitely wanted to have a different perspective on kind of the popular girls and what different insecurities could be for teenagers, because we all have them, even if it seems like we shouldn’t. That it’s okay to be the cheerleader or it’s okay to be the nerd, it’s okay to be all these things. Just be you. I thought that was important.
That definitely comes across.
You chose to integrate a deaf character into the story in a way we don’t necessarily see often in TV and film. It wasn’t a story point, it was just there. Was there a specific reason for that?
It’s a couple of things. For whatever reason, it’s always been important to me to create more roles for people who are thought of traditionally as disabled. We just don’t have enough of those, and even when we do we don’t have enough of them being played by actors who actually have those disabilities. The little boy who played that character is deaf, he is just the most adorable kid in the world.
It was two things. At the time I was writing Sierra I was at a party and I saw this little deaf kid and he was so cute… and it just struck me that Sierra learning sign language would be a way for her to interact with Jamey in a way that would allow them to see each other in person and for him to not hear her voice. It serviced the plot and…if Jamey had a brother who was deaf it would explain his more sensitive side. It just added a layer of complexity to his character, I thought.
I’m hesitant to ask this question because I feel like it’s a nice surprise in the film. For me, it’s not just one romance. There’s more than one here. I think the other romance is something we don’t see a lot of. It was really very nice to see. I’m wondering if that’s something you wanted to include or if it’s a specific choice that kind of just happened along the way in the writing.
Completely, yeah. It was a decision from the outset. As somebody who’s had friends who were popular girls and who’s had friends who were total nerds it’s always really annoyed me in High School movies how the popular girls get completely dehumanized and shown as if they have no heart or aspirations of their own. I also have always noticed that there’s a commonality between those two people at the polar ends of the social spectrum. Both positions can be alienating, both have a lot of people telling them what they should be. I just wanted to show a very different side of what that relationship could be and show how these two seemingly very different girls could come together and that kind of positive impact I feel like female friendships can have that is so unique to female friendships. It can really impact self-love and your ability to see yourself in a new light.
Netflix has been doing more rom coms recently and they’re working with more female writers and directors. How has the process been for you as a writer and the executive producer?
It’s been fantastic. Netflix is amazing. I mean, full disclaimer… I’m writing this thing called Empress, it’s a Mark Millar adaptation…basically a female-driven space opera. It has some of the same themes as Sierra in terms of taking control of your own life and that kind of thing. But Netflix is just so special, such a special place to work right now. They’re so filmmaker friendly, they’re so writer friendly, they want content, they’re not there to get in your way, they’re just there to be a friendly partner. It’s so different than anything I’ve really been exposed to before. It’s a cool place to work right now.
As I mentioned you have a lot of stuff in the works and a lot of it is genre. Heavy on fantasy and comics. I am guessing that’s one of your fandoms?
Yeah. I am supernerd. I really like fantasy and sci-fi. I studied fantasy shit in college and I’m always looking to make my parents feel like they didn’t waste their tuition money.
What I love about it is that you can really take on societal problems in a funhouse mirror way, in a way you can’t in other genres. Just really say something. And also use the full breadth of your imagination. I love it.
I liked that you want a female Darth Vader.
I got a lot of hate comments about that.
Of course you did.
Going back to the film what do you hope people take away from it?
I hope people take away just a sense of contentment with themselves and an ability to see that we all have strengths and weaknesses and to treat themselves and others with kindness because everybody’s going through shit. We’re all deserving of love whether that’s friendship or romantic love. That’s the bigger hope.