USA TODAY International Edition
Cartoonish and addictive ‘ Girlboss’ is the anti-‘ Girls’
They may have similar titles, but Netflix’s new series Girlboss is no Girls.
“I was very sensitive to that title alone, that people would make this automatic connection, I think to the point where there’s absolutely no nudity on the show,” says creator Kay Cannon.
“No ( expletives),” jokes executive producer Charlize Theron, explaining that Girlboss shows zero naughty body parts.
Yet, as one profane, urbane TV series with “girl” in the title departs, another takes its place. Five days after Lena Dunham’s HBO show concluded, Girlboss arrives Friday in its 13- episode entirety.
Colorful and compulsively binge- able, the series is loosely based on Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso’s memoir/ self- help book, as a flattering retelling of her origin story.
In a breakout role for Britt Robertson ( Under the Dome), the heroine of Girlboss is also named Sophia, a 23- year- old troubled child roaming the streets of mid- 2000s San Francisco, scouring stores for vintage clothes to resell at her Nasty Gal eBay store.
While Sophia embarks on plenty of Girls- style misadventures, her cartoonishly brash character borrows more heavily from other dysfunctional antiheroines: She’s a Carrie Bradshaw- type fashionista with the same disdain for the law as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s kooky Sweet Dee.
With the help of her best friend, Annie ( Ellie Reed), Sophia shoplifts, dumpster- dives and subsists on wine and junk food as she attempts to launch her business, as her horrified father ( Dean Norris) looks on.
Fundamentally, Girlboss presents a different kind of comingof- age story than the Girls’ friendship trials, Cannon says. “The most important relationship in the show is Sophia and her business. That’s the true love of her life ( and) a real departure from whatever Girls is.”
The show’s title was a turn- off to TV executives who were first pitched the show. “They said, ‘ You can’t call it Girlboss, and you need to make it more for men,’ ” Cannon says. “We were like, ‘ That is what the show is.’ It was almost like a joke.”
“When we got the rights, we went to one other place,” Theron says. “The feedback we got was absolutely shocking — it was mostly men in the room. We walked out with a sense that if we didn’t find the right home for this, it would become something very mediocre. And I remember standing at the elevator and looking at Kay. She’s just so optimistic, and I’m just this depressed ( expletive).”
While Girlboss got its happy ending on Netflix, the fate of Nasty Gal isn’t as rosy. As Amoruso’s profile rose, her company, which posted $ 100 million in sales by 2012, languished. After she published her best- selling book in 2014, she departed as CEO the next year, and Nasty Gal declared bankruptcy in 2016. In February, the company closed its brick- andmortar stores and completed a sale to British online retailer Boohoo. com.
“It’s not all fairy dust and flow- ers,” says Amoruso, 32, “even when you get to where you thought you wanted to be.”
During the filming of the show, “a whole lot of insane things that might be great material five seasons from now were happening in my life,” Amoruso says. But the presidential election gave her renewed faith in the project’s mission. “I didn’t realize how important Girlboss would be until after the election,” she says.
Cannon hopes the show can inspire all viewers.
“I was incredibly proud to be putting a show like this out there ... in a time ( when) certain control and powers of women might be in jeopardy,” she says. “Girlboss at its core, regardless of gender, is a show about being the boss of your own life.”