Ayla Ruby
On the eve of ATX TV Festival in Austin, the splashy Girls5Eva Karaoke Event (complete with glittery Pink light-up cowboy hats), we chatted with showrunner and creator Meredith Scardino over Zoom about season 3 of the now Netflix show. If you haven’t hopped aboard the Girls5Eva train yet, buckle up for a hilarious, heartwarming ride through Y2K nostalgia, 90s girl group fever, and enough jokes to make your abs ache. With a cast that includes Sara Bareilles, Busy Phillips, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry belting out tunes and delivering punchlines, it’s the perfect remedy for anyone suffering from pop culture withdrawal.
Scardino spilled the tea about the show’s Netflix move, thanking the fans at the streamer for their faith in the show. If you’ve ever wondered about Gray Holland and just how the fictional chain Macaroni Rascals got its name, this chat answers that and more. Scardino talked about Renée Elise Goldsberry’s Wickie and her wholly and surprisingly wholesome family drama in the episode Clarksville. And she even dissected what it means for the group of women for Wickie’s song to get the Kate Bush treatment. It was an awesome chat, and we even got Scardino to admit she’s maybe, possibly thinking about season 4 and what she’d love to explore should they get the chance.
Ayla Ruby:. I would love if you could talk about the show finding a new home on Netflix for season three.
Meredith Scardino: Yeah. Let’s see. It was really lovely when the show became potentially available to be shopped around and then Netflix immediately piped up because a lot of the executives over there were already fans of the show. A couple of them we had worked with before on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or, actually, one of the women, Tracey Pakosta, I actually pitched the show when she used to be at NBC. She really liked it when I pitched there initially, when I first brought the show out. There were some really friendly, lovely, smart, funny, wonderful people over at Netflix that just jumped in and were like, “Oh, we’d love to be the new home.” That was really exciting.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s wonderful. We start out this season, the women are in Texas, things are going wrong. Can you talk about-
Meredith Scardino: Things are always going wrong.
Ayla Ruby:That is true. That’s why it’s-
Meredith Scardino: It’s the hallmark of the show and life.
Ayla Ruby: That’s why it’s so watchable. Right?
Meredith Scardino: Yeah. Yeah.
Ayla Ruby: Is there an overwhelming theme for the season? Do you want to talk about where we started and how we end up with the women?
Meredith Scardino: Sure. Wait, I’m going to cough first though.
Ayla Ruby: That’s okay.
Meredith Scardino: Let get that out of the way. Feel free to use that in any way you like.
Ayla Ruby: It’ll be like the thing in the show with the crunching,
Meredith Scardino: Oh, yeah, exactly. It’ll turn into a new track that will be number one on Spotify. Yeah, so we ended season two with the ladies being like, with Girls5eva saying, “Hey, we really want to do a tour. We want to get out there,” and promote this album that they work so hard on. They hit the road, of course, with very little plan except for they know they have a little bit of heat in Fort Worth, Texas, because, on their new album, they wrote this song all about Fort Worth, Texas, because they were trying to game the system and they did a little bit of math and realized that the biggest city in America that didn’t have a very obvious hit song associated with it was Fort Worth, Texas. They thought, “All right, if we pander to the city that we’ve never been to and write an anthem for them called Tap Into Your Fort Worth, maybe it’ll help us catch on.”
That’s where we pick up in season three. They all pile into a van. They have no plan outside of, “Let’s start in Fort Worth and then, next, the world,” and they immediately get very sucked into the small-time fame and it’s very hard to leave. Wickie takes this huge swing in order to make them leave the warm bath of being beloved in Fort Worth, Texas, which is like she just throws down all their money they’ve made on a down payment to reserve Radio City Music Hall in six months. That’s the thing that we’re getting to by the end of the season we build to.
So much about this season is about they really want to fast track their comeback. Sometimes, life’s timeline is different than your timeline. Wickie is obviously the one who always bites off more than maybe she can chew or others can chew or just lets other people clean up the wake of whatever she’s thrown down. We also explore in this season what is the sweet spot of relevance and fame and creating. They all want to be musicians. They all want to have their voice heard. They want to be on stage, they want to connect with people, but what is the optimal level of fame? We explore that a little bit through a few different characters through this. They meet up with the biggest star in the world on the road.
Ayla Ruby: Gray Holland.
Meredith Scardino: Gray Holland, yeah, and he’s not exactly happy. They have to reconcile with realizing that they’re sucking off of him a little bit and how does that feel, and do they want that brass ring of that massive dominance where this guy has to schedule when he goes to the bathroom. His schedule is so down to the minute and he’s so far away from that initial feeling of what it feels like to create things and make things, and then they also run into Richard Kind who’s a little bit of the hero this season where he’s like, “Look, let me just tell you what happiness is. It’s never being higher on the call sheet of life than number six, working every day doing what you love, but never being so famous that you’re bugged in a deli.” That’s, I think, a little bit of the thesis of the season in addition to a million things on the road that happen. Dawn tries to get prenatal care in an unfriendly state. Gloria’s on a rampage trying to just cram in all these years of oat sowing into a very finite period of time.
Ayla Ruby: She’s got a spreadsheet, too, which is glorious.
Meredith Scardino: Yes. She’s attacking life in a very mathematical way that might not be super the way love works, but she’s doing her thing. Summer is trying to land on her own two feet and live without her identity being defined by a guy. Wickie, we learn what makes her tick when we meet her family. I mean, there’s just so much that happens on the road, but really, by the time they’re back in New York, it’s so much about like, okay, we love… There’s this joyous moment, this concert for no one at Radio City that they sold out. It’s really affirming to be like they’re up there performing the show with their lives and there’s really no one in the audience except a couple of guys from Goldman Sachs who paid the jacked up Ticket Master price, $7,000 ticket-
Ayla Ruby: … and Richard Kind.
Meredith Scardino: … or something, and Richard Kind who shows up. He was everywhere with a Danish. It’s really affirming to them to say, like, “Yeah, we want to do this. We went crazy trying to get here, but we really day to day want to make music and make it together and keep each other normal and embrace the medium time, and then, of course, twist, they get offered Wickie’s old album, sort of Kate Bush’s, and it’s like big time is knocking. What do they do? How are they going to keep themselves normal heading into the future?
Ayla Ruby: Now, you mentioned a bunch of things that happen this season, and I have a lot of questions about all of that. I want to dive into Wickie a little bit. We meet her. We meet her family. We literally go to her mom and dad’s house, and they’re normal. They’re lovely people, not all the stories that Wickie has been saying about them. Can you talk about the decision to do that? Was that always the plan? Was that always your-
Meredith Scardino: There’s another cough. We actually had this in a previous season, but we didn’t get to do it, which was we always thought that she leans into the performative aspects of what she thinks a celebrity should be. She wants to be the highest heights of everything, and so she’s trying to mimic whatever she thinks the world wants from her to get there. She’s a little bit selfish of a character who’s growing her empathy over the series. Renée plays her so incredibly wonderfully. She’s always talked about her family in a way that she thought would be biopic-friendly. We always thought that she bought her mother a house in a performative way that maybe didn’t have anything to do with their life. It wasn’t necessarily, didn’t come from need. It really just came from Wickie wanting to be a bigshot on Access Hollywood and seem incredibly generous and all that. We always had that little flashback idea. We wanted to figure out what made her tick, and we thought it would also be interesting if she resented her parents because they didn’t push her as hard as a potentially troubled pageant parent.
Ayla Ruby: The pageant dad.
Meredith Scardino: She’s looking for everyone to blame about where she is in her career, except a little bit for herself. She’s not really wanting to take a lot of the responsibility because it’s too hard to be like, “Maybe I wasn’t talented enough.” It’s really interesting to see her lash out at her very nice parents for not essentially being like terrible pageant parents that had unrequited dreams that they’re living out through her. “Why did you let me quit tap? Why did you?” all that. We thought it would be interesting for somebody to want that because it does take an incredible banana’s life in some way to achieve some of that stuff, and then we thought it would be interesting to see her fully stripped down and a little bit crushed when she realizes, “Maybe I’m the reason. I’ve thought it was my parents,” blame the record label, blame the business, whatever it is, but maybe, “What if it’s me? What if I don’t have it?” and, okay, “Maybe I’ll just join the real world and be a realtor,” and she almost gags talking about that.
It’s really Dawn realizing that she needs to keep that dream alive a little bit and be a dreamer in order to go for it. I do believe that you have to be a little bit delusional to achieve things because it’s hard and there’s so many reasons why things don’t work all the time. It’s fun to see Dawn try to buck her back up and say, “All right, Radio City it is because we can’t have this version of you that’s completely broken.”
Ayla Ruby: I think, in that episode, Renée performance really was so dramatically different than how the character has been otherwise. She just nailed it in every way through that.
Meredith Scardino: Oh, my gosh, she’s so good.
Ayla Ruby: It was phenomenal.
Meredith Scardino: Phenomenal. She’s incredible. It was her idea in the morning to be sitting in that twin bed and just have no remnants of the Wickie persona. She was all Lesley Wiggins, just completely no makeup, feeling basically like a teen crushed in her bed, just upset. What I love about this cast and Renee in that scene is she’s saying very absurd things, but you’re still feeling the emotion of the scene. You’re still feeling for her even if she’s saying or imagining this horrible life where she believes she’s just as forgettable as a doctor. She’s really selling it, and you’re feeling all the emotion while you’re also laughing.
Ayla Ruby: Now, I know we’re starting to get close on time. I’d love to talk a little bit about Gloria’s relationship with Gray because I thought that was just so interesting and fun and, obviously, it’s so key to the message of the season.
Meredith Scardino: Yeah. It was fun to think about how Girls5eva might meet up with certain people on the road. We thought it would be interesting if they interacted with somebody that they basically wanted to be or someone who very clearly could help them, so we created this character, Gray Holland, who’s just basically the biggest star in the world. It felt fun for Gloria to start up a relationship with him without knowing who he was and then what happens when she does know who he is. They need something from him. One of the things before the season, I was talking to Sara Bareilles about life on the road and just trying to get some ideas for the season, and she said, “You start looking for certain things that are familiar for comfort,” so we came up with this idea of this chain, Macaroni Rascals. Do you know where that name came from?
Ayla Ruby: No. I’d love to know though.
Meredith Scardino: Okay. The name of Jersey Shore when it aired in Japan, they gave it a new name in Japanese, and that name is the Real Life Adventures of the Macaroni Rascals.
Ayla Ruby: Wow. I had no idea.
Meredith Scardino: We always thought it was the funniest name. I mean, I’m Italian. It’s hilarious. They’re calling it the Macaroni Rascals. Anyway, that’s where that name came from. If Gloria is going there to seek comfort on the road and Gray is also going there to seek comfort on the road and pretending he’s a trucker, and Gloria is the one person in the world who has no idea who this guy is because, as she says later, “I don’t memorize men’s faces,” we thought it was really lovely if she struck up a friendship with him and then, later, when the others realized who he is, it’s like, “Okay. Well, come on, how can he help us? How can he help us?” and Gloria really, at the end of the day, feeling for this guy as a person and wanting to help him because, all season, we’ve seen her help wounded animals on the side of the road, whatever the van hits.
Real-life Paula Pell is a massive animal lover and has rescued so many animals over the years. She basically lives on a farm for elder animals of all shapes and sizes. We just thought that, at the end of the day, it would be lovely if she helped this guy, sacrifice their big shot to prioritizing the friendship over fame.
Ayla Ruby: It all comes full circle with the Missing Person Murder podcast.
Meredith Scardino: Yes. Exactly. I mean, it was using all of her skills, dentistry, murder podcasts, animals she’s rescued on the side of the road, it all came, being obsessed with people faking their deaths, and then we have that absurd ending in the end of episode five. It is earned. I mean, you really do feel their relationship and their love for each other. Paula and Thomas in real life really became friends. It was really fun to watch. They had such a great chemistry.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s awesome. At the end of the finale, there’s a cliffhanger. Do you have anything that you can share about a season four? Have there been conversations or is there anything you want us to know about the show before we wrap up?
Meredith Scardino: Yeah. I don’t know yet about a season Four. I really love writing these characters. I think they’re wonderful. Myself and the writing team, we all love working with this group. I mean, there’s so many places you could take them. I would love to do more if that’s in the cards. Yeah, and I have lots of ideas. I would like to see them navigate some success and see what that’s like after Wickie, Kate Bush’s, “What does it look like?” I mean, it is nice that she basically is like, “I’m not going without…” I mean, she’s grown a lot. It’s wonderful to see her not want to go without them.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for talking. This has been wonderful.
Meredith Scardino: Oh, it was great talking to you.
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