THERE 4 EACH OTHER
Hulu’s ‘Dollface’ sees characters coping with turning 30
Turning 30 brings about all kinds of personal and professional pressures, but “Dollface” is where those stereotypes go to die.
The Hulu comedy series, returning for its second season Friday, finds the four friends it centers on approaching that round number when society expects you to have it all figured out. Spoiler alert: they don’t, but that’s OK.
“We should have found our career, we should be on top, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list,” Shay Mitchell, who plays the self-assured Stella newly returned from business school, told the Daily News.
“There can be a lot of pressure, but with these girls, they also realize toward the end that it’s just about finding what you love and doing it,” adds Mitchell, 35. “There’s not a set time of when you need to be at this certain place or hit this certain goal. As life goes on, you realize who you are and you become more and more who you’re supposed to be.”
For many, 30 is supposed to be things like marriage and kids, a career, a membership to the local gym, a retirement fund.
“All of that is an outdated idea of what a win is,” showrunner Michelle Nader told The News of the series that also revolves around Jules (Kat Dennings), Madison (Brenda Song) and Izzy (Esther Povitzky).
“The wins are little moments where you get to be with your friends and you get to be really happy, but around the corner it could be a real big disappointment.”
Where the first season of “Dollface” saw Jules trying to rebuild the friendships in her life after a messy breakup, the second cares more about moving forward, not fixing the past. Jules finds new power at work. Madison branches out on her own. Stella makes a big career move. Izzy figures out what exactly she wants, or at least tries to.
But the point of the show is that they do it together.
Series creator Jordan Weiss said she wanted the characters’ problems to be normal, like bad bosses, bad boyfriends.
Povitsky, who plays the constantly neurotic Izzy, agreed, telling The News, “Characters feeling things that I’ve felt before.”
Those feelings, she said, include the ticking clock toward 30, a timeline boosted by Hollywood and beauty magazines.
“You’re in a race, but there’s no real clock there,” Povitsky, 33, said. “Maybe life can start at 30.”
Mitchell says that playing a character who’s a work in progress is fun, but also more real. She wants these women to screw up, because the growth comes from fixing it.
“We portray our mistakes,” she said. “We’re learning as we go, which is basically what we do as humans as well.”
The four best friends of “Dollface” found their way back to each other in the first season, and that’s part of the journey. Their jobs are getting better. That’s part of it, too. They’re steps on the path, but there’s no end point.
“It’s been a process of looking back at my early 20s and seeing a real sense of impermanence with me and my friends,” said Weiss, who’s approaching her own 30th birthday. “We had each other, but jobs come and go, boyfriends and girlfriends come and go, hangovers came and went easier than they do now.”
“Now, [I’m] at a point where it’s like, ‘OK, let’s invest time and energy into the relationships we want to bring forward.’ Things are going to last more. Things are going to count more. People that we’re dating are becoming life partners. Jobs are becoming careers,” Weiss added.
“I wanted to frame the season in a way that allowed these four characters to check in with themselves about that and see what they really want moving forward.”