We sat down with the creator of Sweet/Vicious, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, to preview what’s to come for MTV’s brand new kickass series.
We’ve been talking about Sweet/Vicious non-stop since we first said you should be paying attention to this show.
Since then, we’ve gotten a trailer, and the first three episodes of the series’ freshman run have landed online. Now, we’re chatting with the show’s creator about what’s to come.
Interview with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the creator of ‘Sweet/Vicious’
‘Sweet/Vicious’ looks like an adaptation of a comic book, from the way that the scenes are framed to even the color of Ophelia’s hair, so how big of an influence did comics play in creating the show?
They were a super big influence for me. I love that world. It was always really important, even when I was working with MTV, every time I sent them something, whether it was a new script or a series Bible, which is showing the season and mapping things out, that I always made a visual. I always made it feel like it was Pop Art. I think it’s so important to the overall tone and vibe of the show. I love comic books. I love that genre, and I also love that kind of Pop Art style of movies, like the colorful movies of Tarantino and the way that people use the color and that vibrant kind of world to tell a story. It was super, super, super influential to me in the creation of the show.
Are there any specific comics or comic book characters that inspired you?
Batman inspired me. Selina Kyle actually really inspired me because she’s a little bit of an Ophelia, especially her origin story being the orphan who was scrappy and came up that way. She was an inspiration. I love Peter Parker. I think there’s a little bit of Peter Parker in Jules because she’s thrust into this world and this life. Now, obviously, what happened to her is very different than a radioactive spider bite, but there are little bits of comic book characters in the girls. Kick-Ass was a huge thing for me. Even graphic novels like Black Hole. I just love the tone of that. I always love seeing something that’s just weird and dark, but feels real and can also feel grounded even though it’s so heightened and so out there.
MTV was obviously excited to back this project, but did you get any resistance from anyone else, and if so, how did you overcome that or push through it?
This didn’t go to anyone else. MTV actually bought it exclusively. One other network read it and passed, and then it was immediately bought by MTV. I didn’t pitch the show; I didn’t do any of that. It was a very interesting, kind of different experience than I’ve heard from a lot of people. It very rarely happens this way. But they, from the beginning, were so on board with the story. At no point in the development before we shot the pilot or the development of the series or in episode development [did they object]. If anything, they kept being like, “Go deeper. What else is in the story? What else can we mine out of this?” There was never any push back and there was never any fear of controversy. They really were such amazing partners. They understood the story we wanted to tell and they were so on board.
What was the process of getting the writer’s room together? Did you already have people in mind or was it something else that came together organically?
I developed the show with Stacey Sher as a producer. Then when we got picked up to pilot, MTV paired me with a showrunner because I had never done this before. I had never even been on staff before. So about halfway into the pilot process, we had pretty much been done casting it, and I got paired with a showrunner and Amanda [Lasher] was there with me. Then when we got picked up to series, Amanda and I, we just read a ton of scripts. I want to say I read over 100 scripts. And anyone that we responded to, we met with. From there, you kind of see who you vibe with, whose writing style works and makes sense with the show. We were able to put together a small room. I am very, very proud of the writers that we worked with. They are absolutely incredible. It was super important for us to find a diverse group of people. We had a Black woman who was our writer’s assistant, who was super vocal and amazing. We had another woman named Celeste Ballard, who was awesome. We had a gay man named Jared Frieder, who was amazing. And actually the last piece of the puzzle that we literally couldn’t find was a straight white man. That has never happened in the history of television. They were like, “We don’t have one. We can’t find one.”
Was there a theme for season 1 that helped guide you guys through this first part of the story?
I think it was just being on Jules’ journey, and seeing how that works and how that lays out, and unpacking through the season, being able to tell that story objectively, but also being able to tell it through Jules’ eyes and having the ripple effects of each beat in the story that happens throughout the season and how it effects all the other characters. We really wanted to tell this story and be able to be in Kennedy’s head about it, her best friend, and in Nate’s head about it, the boy that assaulted her. What does his journey look like? What does her journey look like? What does it mean for Ophelia and Harris, because she’s getting deeper and deeper into this activity that she knows her only and best friend Harris would never accept because he is so deep within the justice system as a lawyer. That’s what he’s been working for his whole life. He’s self-adjusted in a way that Ophelia never has, so what gives her the right to become this vigilante and crusade for justice when it’s not even something that’s necessarily touched her life in a way that has probably touched everyone else around her? We really wanted to unpack all of the different nuances of the characters and the show that we kick off and jump-start in the pilot episode, too.
What other people are involved in the show and what kind of influence did they have?
All the executive producers are women. So it’s myself and Stacey Sher, who produced Reality Bites and Pulp Fiction and Erin Brockovich. She is incredible. And then Amanda Lasher, who’s our showrunner who came from Gossip Girl and then she was on Togetherness. And then Emily Levithan, who is another producer that works with Stacey. So it was the four of us at the head of the metaphorical table. It was really an environment where we wanted to bring in as many women as we could, but we also had a lot of amazing men that were so excited to be working on this project and to be a part of it. At no point did we ever have anyone that felt alienated by it or wasn’t just as empowered even though it was about two women. It was empowering the men on our set as well. Our [Director of Cinematography], Steve Gainer, was such a champion. He’s so amazing. We already spoke to the way the show looks; that’s all him. He was incredible. So, yes, we had a very amazing group of powerful women at the epicenter of this project, but everyone that worked on it really did feel like they were a part of it, I hope, and it was such an amazing collaboration.
It’s always a hope with a show, especially like this one, to have it kick off a positive trend, either on the network or on TV in general, so what are you hoping that ‘Sweet/Vicious’ will bring to the table that will change the way television is written, produced, or even consumed.
I hope that we can get more stories about women, especially young women, more stories that are inclusive, and more stories that celebrate diversity. I wish there was more out there when I was younger that made me feel less alone, and made me feel like it was okay to be a weirdo or feel vulnerable and that that wasn’t a weakness. I think a lot of the stuff that I grew up on, and I’m hoping this is melting away a little bit, was very much the clichés of the popular, pretty girl who’s a bitch and the weird loner who wears the glasses. There are so many tropes that we really tried to dispel a little bit with this show because I don’t think that’s what the world looks like anymore. And I think if we can have more entertainment out there and we can do more to making things for and about young women positive and empowering, but also super fun, I think young women will learn to treat each other a little bit different. What you see in entertainment is what mirrors in our classrooms and on college campuses. People are always going to look up to and point to what is in entertainment and what is in celebrity culture as what is cool, and I hope entertainment can evolve so being kind is really cool and being inclusive is really cool. And not diversity because “Oh, God, we need X, Y, and Z races on this show,” but diversity because that’s what the world looks like. Yes, the two very, very main characters [of Sweet/Vicious] are two white women, but I hope someone my age who is an African American woman is inspired to write a show starring two Black girls or two Indian girls. I hope this opens up the world so more people feel inspired to get out there and get their stories out there because it’s so important.
One of my favorite things about this show is, going into it, I kind of knew what it was going to be about, but it’s not one dimensional. There’s so much more to the show than just Jules’ story of being assaulted, and that is something that’s very important because you want a well-rounded story where all of your characters get their moments to shine. That being said, if your audience could walk away with only one lesson after watching this show, what would you like it to be?
It’s so hard to boil it down to one lesson because it is so many different things. I would hope that they walk away feeling a little less alone. That is why I wrote the show. That was such a huge thing for me, and not just for women. I hope whoever you are out there, whether you see yourself in Harris, or you see yourself in Jules, or you see yourself in Ophelia, or you see yourself in Kennedy, I hope that this show makes you feel heard and understood and empowered.
Can you preview what you might be working on today [Nov. 7] or anything that you were specifically excited about for the upcoming season?
Right now we’re working on the finale, so we’re editing that right now. I think the first five episodes really are a little bit more procedural. There’s a story of the week. But 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, it kicks into overdrive. At the end of 5, the show really kicks into overdrive, and you’re on, and it’s kind of like a sprint to the finish line. I really hope people stay with us. I think episode 6 is phenomenal. Episode 7, we unpack through flashback everything that happened to Jules. We really wanted to tell the story. We wanted to show it. We show pre-assault, we do show the assault, and we show her choices afterwards, as well as how she’s treated by the school and where she goes and what kind of counseling she seeks. In 8, we really unpack and speak to the fact that violence does not fix violence. My biggest thing is that I really hope people watch all 10 episodes because it really is a journey. The first couple [episodes], yes, there’s a bunch of serialized stuff in there, but they do feel a bit more procedural, like a story of the week, but at the end of 5, we really kick it into high gear and we really get into the beat of Jules’ story. We really begin to unpack it, and not only for Jules, but for everyone on the show.
