‘I thought nothing good would ever happen to me unless I got thin’

It’s the savage satire that everyone’s talking about. Jane Mulkerrins feasts her eyes on the cast of new show Dietland

THE DAYS of mindless, comfortable TV are, it seems, firmly behind us, with the hottest shows of the past year or so – Big Little Lies and The Handmaid’s Tale – delivering a dose of subversive drama, and capturing the zeitgeist of protest and resistance. So it is with Dietland, a pitchblack, pin-sharp new series launching this week that looks set to start some major conversations about female body image and impossible beauty standards.

Adapted from the 2015 best-selling novel of the same name by Sarai Walker, and set in the New York offices of teen publication Daisy Chain, the story skewers the magazine and beauty industries’ preoccupation with female thinness. Meanwhile, a feminist vigilante group called Jennifer is meting out its own justice to men who have subjected women to sexual assault or abuse.

THE AGONY AUNT

It is not only Dietland’s subject matter that is subversive. Leading lady Joy Nash, who plays Plum Kettle – an overweight woman who believes her life will begin once she has gastric band surgery – is tipped by The Hollywood Reporter as one of its 10 breakthrough stars of 2018.

Joy, 37, admits she never believed she’d be heading up a high-profile show. ‘One of my first acting teachers told me, “You should really think about audiobook narration.” And I took that to mean: “You’re very talented, but I don’t want to look at you”.’

Plum’s journey leads to ‘fat acceptance’, a place Joy got to some years ago. ‘I read [activist] Marilyn Wann’s book Fat! So? when I was 18 and it blew me away. Nobody had ever suggested that I might be OK as I was. The idea was that I had to get “fixed” – ie thin – or nothing good was ever going to happen to me.’ And don’t call her ‘heavy’, ‘ big’, or ‘plus-size’. ‘If people [use] euphemisms to describe me, it’s clear they think there’s something wrong with me,’ says Joy. ‘I use the word “fat” because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being fat.’

THE EDITOR

The glamorous, gym-honed, impeccably dressed Kitty Montgomery, editor of Daisy Chain, is played by Julianna Margulies, star of ER and The Good Wife. ‘I am always the girl with the heart on her sleeve, so it’s delicious to play the bad guy for once,’ she says. ‘Kitty gets all the best lines.’

And, while she might seem monstrous, Julianna believes Kitty is also a product of the patriarchal systems of power that have defined her industry, and many others. ‘She has played the game to get where she is now,’ says Julianna. ‘She has slept her way to the top, because she felt she had to. She has this great monologue, where she says to Plum: “Do you know what it took to get where I am? I sucked a lot of dick. And the dick was nothing – the dick was a picnic compared to the assholes I had to cater to, and humour and please, knowing the whole time that I was smarter and better at the job.’ Julianna sighs. ‘I think that pretty much any woman, in any high-powered position, would be able to say to that: Me Too.’ ‘ Dietland’ is available on Amazon Prime Video from 5 June