Jenn Kaytin Robinson

Image from Los Angeles Times

enn Kaytin Robinson is a writer and director; her works include Someone Great (Netflix), Unpregnant, and the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder (Marvel). We the Women walk down memory road with Jenn to discuss Sweet/Vicious — a revenge dramedy that centers around two college women who double as vigilantes to take down sexual abusers — and her artistic relationship with Taylor Swift. 

We the Women: A huge reason why, I think, made Sweet/Vicious so compelling is because of how complicated the characters were in their intentions and actions. I was so focused on Jules [the lead] the first time around, but rewatching, there’s something so raw about Kennedy [Jules' roommate and Nate's, Jules' rapist, girlfriend] struggling to accept this is someone she not only knows, but had an intimate relationship with.

Jenn Kaytin Robinson: We always said going into it — to tell the story —, we had to tell it objectively. We had to do it in a way where no one was trying to exonerate him, but say, you kind of have to look at all the different angles that this touches and it can't just be black and white. Because then we're just doing the same thing that other people have done, where they’re just a rapist and a victim. I wanted to make sure that [Sweet/Vicious] was a nuance in all different directions, so that makes me very happy that that's something that stuck. It was always our goal to make sure that all the stories we were telling weren't just the same. Abuse wears many masks and it has many faces.

WTW: It's been four years since the show aired, and yet I feel like people reference it so often because it was so radical for what it was at the time. But obviously, there's been so many developments in our culture since then, especially around sexual assault. What has it been like, looking back? 

JKR: My love for the show has evolved. The more time I spend away from it, the more I think, unfortunately, we were what you’d call ‘ahead of the curve.’ [Sexual assault] is this huge problem that everyone needed to pay attention to and 100%, the Me Too Movement blew it open. But Jesus Christ, it took so much and so long to get there. I’m so proud of the work we did, but it took so much to get there — like Donald Trump becoming president — to push everyone to that place. The boiling point was so high and so hot because people were just starting to pay complete attention. 

And I believe — this is just my personal belief — that the Me Too movement was a direct response to the Trump presidency and our inability to do anything about it. Women banded together to take down the men they could and that opened the floodgates to the Me Too movement, which was incredibly needed. But unfortunately, these movements (like the Women’s March) can be co-opted by white women and turned into something that was never intended to be in the first place. 

WTW: Is there anything that you would have done differently?

It would just be more inclusive. I truly don't regret anything that we did, but I would work harder to make the show tell stories that felt more inclusive and that involves different narratives. That's the one thing that I would say is definitely missing from the first season is its representation in the LGBTQ community. 

WTW: I rewatched the show recently and it still deeply resonated. I'm curious: what would the girls be doing now, in this alternative reality? Or would it have been an alternate reality?

JKR: I don't know how I would have tackled that as a writer, or if I would have tackled it within the space of the world because it was really important to me when we built the show that it felt — for lack of a better term — comic booky and have its own universe. Like, Donald Trump would not exist in the Sweet/Vicious universe. I think that it would have been a sideways mirror to what was happening in the world. I don't know exactly where I would have taken it and what I would have done. I do know that like it was always my intent for their world to close in on them; like they had to pack up their car and leave Darlington as all of their friends graduated. I like the idea because there's no way they could have just kept going without consequence, with what they were doing and who they were going after. 

The second season for me would have been about them going after the establishment, because you can only go after these people one by one for so long before you realize you have to attack the Hydra. 

WTW: Not that shortly after Sweet/Vicious, you created Someone Great, which was a huge hit. It felt different from the early 2000s rom-coms that we grew up with because it wasn’t really about the romance at all. 

JKR: It's a love story between the three women and when I think about it, I always said it's a rom com if a rom wasn't com. Like it is a romantic comedy, but it's not; it's not really about him at all. The pieces of him that you're seeing are all through her memory of him and you're never seeing the objective story of Jenny and Nate. You're seeing what she's feeling and what she remembers and how she remembers it.

WTW: And Taylor Swift was a huge fan, obviously. [Note: On her Lover album, Swift wrote ‘Death by A Thousand Cuts’] and credited Someone Great as an inspiration]

JKR: When I heard [the news], it was the biggest version of women inspiring women in art. I still maintain that the likelihood of me getting hit by a bus seems higher When the interview on Elvis Duran came out, I was in London in a park by myself and someone sent me the video and was like, ‘Jenn. Have you seen this?’ I watched the video and I started hysterically crying in this park. And then I just started walking around the park because I didn't know anyone; I was literally alone in London. I was just alone in London walking around the park, like I needed to tell someone about this and I have no one to talk to. So it was a very weird experience to have to take in and be by myself. 

WTW: It’s always incredible to hear women speak so openly about other women, particularly when we can pinpoint the way they inspired us. 

JKR: I was completely stunned. Her generosity — in the way that she spoke about the film and said my name — that's a big deal. I feel like people could potentially see that and not think twice about it, but she went out of her way to speak about the movie and speak about me and speak about the plot. She could have just said it was inspired by a movie. She didn't have to do anything that she did, but she purposely lifted up the other art made by women and that is something very few people do.