Is America Ready for Australian Sensation Why Are You Like This? – Vanity Fair

Bonanno, whom Higgins was already dating, was brought on board as the only member of the creative team with previous script-writing experiencehes a member of Aunty Donna, a sketch troupe with their own Netflix show. Even then, the three creators werent entirely sure how to write a sitcom. Bonanno used Seinfelds The Big Salad episode as a model, studying its script to figure out how to structure an A-plot and a B-plot. Higgins drew from her extensive experience watching TV as a child in Bullengarook, a rural town 30 miles from Melbourne. Mahbub had to threaten to quit her job in order to get leave to attend script workshops.

Though they didnt have much professional training, they did have plenty of material to draw from. Much of Why Are You Like This was inspired by the creative teams own experiences. Pennys arc in the premiere episode, in which she accuses a gay man of being homophobic, is based upon something Higgins did back when she worked at a tech startup. Another episode focuses on Austins depression, an illness all three creators have battled. The song that plays during Austins drag performance in that episode, Peggy Lees Is That All There Is?, is the same song one of Bonanno and Higginss friends listens to when hes depressed. They based the character on him and added the performance element after script editors said the episode needed something active, after several scenes in which Austin is not moving much, because, as Bonanno said, when youre depressed, you cant fucking do anything.

Internet-induced nihilism is an essential component of Why Are You Like This. According to Higgins, being a 20-something means seeing fucked stuff all the time [as a result] of being online. But because youre so depressed, its all fine. Its all gravy, baby. Still, its strange to see those aforementioned glowing reviews classifying the show as a grenade being launched at Gen Z. The characters are young, but their generation is never definednor do the creators think it necessarily matters. I think anyone writing about this over 35 are like, [Its about] young people, Mahbub said. Its not that the technologys any different, its just that [theyve] forgotten what its like to be 22. (For context, Mahbub is 31, Bonanno is 33, and Higgins is in her late 20s.)

To accurately depict their characters experiences, basically, we didnt have to do a focus group on how 20-year-olds use TikTok, Bonanno said. That said, hes personally reduced the amount of time he spends on social media these days. Mahbub deleted her Twitter a while ago, as shes told several interviewers while doing press for the show. Im prone to cyberbullying, she told memeaning that shes susceptible to bullying other people. (She does, however, still have a lurking account.) I guess its all on me, Higgins said. I feel pretty cemented in TikTok and those sorts of things. Im a huge consumer of that kind of media. [The show] is us looking back at our experiences when we were younger and a little angrier, but then, were writing about today, and were still alive today.

Its not like the creators have an optimistic outlook for the world anyway. Its been shit, Mahbub said. Itll be shit, and then theres nothing. Thats it. So why bother making a show? The answer is simple, said Higgins: What else are we doing?

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Is America Ready for Australian Sensation Why Are You Like This? - Vanity Fair