Call me Negative Nancy, but I didn’t know what to think after I watched the trailer for Netflix’s new show, I Am Not Okay With This. I liked the cast, fronted by It‘s Sophia Lillis and Wyatt Oleff, and I liked the team (more on that later). But could Netflix pull off another coming-of-age series to sit with the likes of Sex Education and Stranger Things? Well, the short answer is yes, yes they can.
The long answer is an embarrassing story about how I watched the season finale on the train to work, and then gasped aloud over the ending. And then I fell over as the train jolted to a stop. But I didn’t care! ‘Cos I couldn’t stop thinking about the end.
Lillis stars as Sydney Novak, the main character of I Am Not Okay With This. The gist is that Syd has a lot going on. She’s figuring out her sexuality, her best friend Dina (Sofia Bryant) is dating an absolute tosspot named Brad (Richard Ellis), her neighbour Stan (Oleff) is 14/10 into her, and she doesn’t get on with her mum, Maggie (Kathleen Rose Perkins). Also, she has superpowers. Like actual superpowers.
The season is only 7 episodes long, and all episodes are under 30 minutes. It’s bloody perfect binging material, tell ya what.
Ahead of its release, I chatted to Richard Ellis about Brad. Once again, Brad is a dick. Not Richard, Richard is delightful. But Brad? Big dickhead.
“Brad is kind of the epitome of a guy who peaked in high school,” Ellis says. “He’s incredibly narcissistic, he’s very entitled, his only concern is how he’s viewed and what he wants. So if anybody gets in his way or if anybody causes him trouble, he will make it his life mission to make life hell for them.”
That’s Brad to a T, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Netflix has made a point of telling us that this show is from the directors / producers of Stranger Things and The End Of The F***ing World, but that doesn’t mean you should expect the same sort of thing.
“Superpowers aren’t necessarily the focal point of the series, but the aftermath of people’s actions,” Ellis explains. “I think that’s something unique that we haven’t seen yet.”
So now I’m going to skip to the ending because I need to talk about it. Huge, massive spoilers are nigh. If you’ve yet to binge the series right to the end, please, please, scroll away.
In the season finale, Syd kills Brad. Yep. Syd makes his head pop… at PROM. His head EXPLODES. I interviewed Richard about two hours after I watched the last episode, and it was all I could think about. In fact, one of the first things I said to Richard was that I was sorry his head exploded.
He said thank you, and then he shared how he first found out about Brad’s death.
“It was really funny,” he laughs, “I hadn’t read all of the script yet and I bumped into Kathleen, who plays Sydney’s mum at the airport on the way to Pittsburgh. So it was before I had met anybody else in the cast. We were just ironically on the same flight, and she was like, ‘How does it feel that your head blows off!?’ I was like, ‘What?!’”
“I didn’t realise I got Ned Stark-ed,” he laughed.
I tell him it’s an honour.
“Yeah, it’s a really cool way to go out,” he says. “If you’re going to go out, go out big. But yeah, it was very hard to talk to my mum and my brother who are like, ‘Oooh, what happens if you get a second season, are you excited?’ And I was like, ‘Yeeeeeeaah!’ in a voice that’s so high-pitched.”
Legend.
I Am Not Okay With This is Ellis’ first big role, so here’s what you need to know about him.
“I’m a lot nicer than Brad!” he says immediately. “But I also like music and writing and that’s something I want to sink my teeth into more that I’ll have a little bit more of a platform. But the big one is that I am not like that guy.”
I Am Not Okay With This is streaming on Netflix now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9vp9lhZiqU
