Pittsburgh native brings her own vision to Netflix
Lauren Morelli has “Tales” to tell.
When the first of nine “Tales of the City” books by Armistead Maupin was published in 1978, the idea of an LGBTQ+ community living and loving in San Francisco seemed, to much of America, like the colonization of some foreign land.
In 1993, when the first book was made into a miniseries that ran in the United Kingdom and stateside on PBS, reviews often described the material as “controversial” and “edgy.”
Now, it’s time for a 2019 update. Morelli, 36, who grew up in McCandless and is a Winchester Thurston School graduate, is writer, executive producer and showrunner for the 10-episode Netflix series that debuts June 7.
“Certainly, when you take something like this on, there is always the fear that you don’t want to be the person who messed it up,” Morelli said, only half-joking.
“This isn’t a show that you make because you want to reinvent it. ‘Tales’ is a show you remake because maybe you want to expand the world, update it.”
Four main characters from the original 1993 miniseries reprise their roles: Laura Linney as Mary Ann, a straight woman who left California to pursue an acting career out East; Olympia Dukakis as Anna Madrigal, a stately, aging transgender woman everyone looks to for guidance; Paul Gross as Brian Hawkins, Mary Ann’s ex-husband; and Barbara Garrick as DeDe, a wealthy woman figuring out her own map through life.
The residents of the big, rambling house on Barbary Lane exist in a living, breathing soap opera. “Tales of the City” is very funny and occasionally tragic. It exudes an overall feeling of warmth and acceptance.
One of the aspects that most excited Morelli was examining lives on a spectrum.
“We are so lucky now,” she said. “There are so many more queer stories being told on television, but often we’re still presented with overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male.
“And we are often thought of as a monolith, when in fact there are so many diverse identities within the community that I wanted to talk about.”
Major players in the update include Ellen Page as Shawna — Brian and Mary Ann’s daughter — nonbinary transgender actor Garcia as a young trans man, Murray Bartlett as Michael Tolliver and Charlie Barnett as Michael’s younger
boyfriend.
Jen Richards, a transgender woman, portrays Anna in flashback.
Updating an iconic series — two more installments of “TOTC” ran on Showtime in 1998 and 2001 — “didn’t feel overwhelming,” Morelli said, adding that “joyful” was a more appropriate word.
Morelli was married to a man and working as a writer on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” when she accepted she was a lesbian. Her friendship with “OITNB” actress Samira Wiley became something more; they married in 2017.
In accepting her 2018 Emmy award as best guest actress in a television drama (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), Wiley thanked Morelli, “who, every day, shows me what real passion is for your work, and every hour, gives me a reason to breathe.”
“I came out, what five, six years ago and to find myself now in this remarkably queer world feels … ‘fast’ in some ways.
“It also feels like a way for me to celebrate not only my own identity in coming out but also to give the next generation what I wish I had had.”
Six others in the “TOTC” writers room consider themselves members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Morelli signed an overall deal with Netflix to develop new shows when she left “OITNB” in 2016. A producer for “TOTC” called her in to help work on Ellen Page’s Shawna (“I had never heard of ‘Tales of the City,’ the producer was very shocked”) and she wound up writing a pilot for the series.
Maupin is a producer and writer on the show, with 1993 series producer Alan Poul directing some new episodes. Morelli said having the voices of LGBTQ+ writers, producers, directors in the creative process was a priority.
“We can’t ignore how much further we are in this conversation, with transauthentic casting being paramount. So you see a number of trans characters on screen who are being played by trans actors. There were trans directors, there was a trans writer; incorporating trans voices wherever we could felt very important.”
Having Maupin on board, Morelli said, made it that much better. The stories are new but they’re all living in the world of “kindness and warmth Armistead built.”
“And that was the thing that really made me feel like, ‘Oh, OK, I can do this. I can do this justice.’”
Telling these stories “about people who are doing their best and treating each other with inherent respect and love and kindness,” she added, was structured as a limited series.
“We tried to really honor that in the storytelling. This season should feel like a book. There are 10 chapters and when you’re finished, you should close the cover and feel like you’ve been on a really satisfying ride.”