Ripley Parker talks writing Netflix's Everything Now, body image and championing queer dramas

Ripley Parker, daughter of two Hollywood stars, once called Boris Johnson a “c**t” in public.

“It was a rogue move, but it was one I would make again,” she tells GLAMOUR, recounting the tale of her calling out the politician, who was foreign secretary at the time, when she encountered him at the theatre.

She may come from entertainment industry stock, but she certainly knows her own mind and has her own stories she wants to tell. Ripley has written her own Netflix show, derived from her own personal experiences around food and body image, grounded in a dramatic, hedonistic and nostalgic portrayal of teenagehood.

Read More

Everything Now is a must-watch for Sex Education and Heartstopper fans, and the trailer just dropped

The show will focus on “mental health issues faced by British teenagers”.

By Jabeen Waheed and Charley Ross

Initially named The F*ck It Bucket, Everything Now tells the story of Mia (played by Sophie Wilde), who has just returned home from an institution where she received treatment for various eating disorders. Upon arriving back at sixth form, she feels like she’s missed several beats with her friends – and vows to catch up with the partying and social milestones she’s missed.

But what ends up catching up with her the most is her illness, and the darkness and insecurities that bred it.

It’s an absolute ride of a TV show, and has been quickly compared to sex positive, diverse Netflix hits such as Heartstopper and Sex Education. Ripley sat down with GLAMOUR to break down what that means to her, why she hopes queer dramas won’t always be reduced to a joke, and how she navigates that nepo baby discourse.

When writing Everything Now, why did you want to focus on how both food and body image issues impact young people?

It was something that I struggled with a lot as a teenager, and they say you should start off writing drawing heavily from what you know, and it was an area that I felt I could speak on with some authority, and that I might have something useful to impart to people.

Once we started writing it, we had mental health advocates and eating disorder experts talk to us about what an enormously prevalent issue it is in the UK. The statistics are staggering, which made us double down on our dedication to telling this story in as truthful and heartfelt a way as we were able to – and hopefully educate people and shed some light on a subject that isn’t talked about nearly often enough.

Tell me a bit about the research you had to do into eating disorders and how to bring the truth of them to the screen – what was important to you in how it was portrayed?

We definitely leaned on the expertise of people who had either been working in film and TV longer than I had, or were more seasoned experts on the topic of mental health. We had all these consultants who would gently steer us in the right direction every time we would maybe make a misstep or do something that could be considered triggering. It was very important that we were very real and raw with it and not glamorise it in any way, whilst also taking care not to show anything too triggering or anything that could be detrimental to someone else's journey.

How does it feel to have Everything Now compared to Sex Education and Heartstopper, and what do you hope these shows are doing for young people who are watching?

I hope people can feel empowered through this show to embrace their own self expression. It’s an obvious point, but I think women and queer people are too often portrayed as very one note in media and hemmed in by the stereotypes associated with that identity.

Whereas in the show, the characters are continually evolving and nobody is tied to one thing, nobody feels like an archetype. I hope people will find something to love and aspire to – seeing that there are infinite ways of being, infinite ways to be queer, infinite ways to be a woman, nothing is fixed. I hope that people will find freedom in that fluidity in the same way so many people have found it from Heartstopper and Sex Education.

The show balances the sheer joy and the paralysing lows from being a teenager – what was it like bringing those feelings to the screen?

It was hard to find that balance of light and dark and not switching too frivolously between the two – making it all feel balanced. Being a teenager, it's such a heady time and all emotions are so heightened.

The process of writing the show was also enormously nostalgic, remembering that dichotomy of teenage life where you can wake up in the morning and feel like your whole life is over. And then by the evening, you're dancing your heart out with your friends. I thought writing Everything Now would make me being nostalgic for being 17 – it also made me really proud that I'd survived it.

Friendship and family is at the core of the show – how important was that for you to portray?

There's just so much beauty in seeing how Mia’s friends are there for her. Especially in seeing how often they get it wrong, and I guess seeing that support doesn't always feel good. While she is maybe not in a place to look out for her own best interest, they are looking out for her. I guess they're kind of her anchor in the storm.

Similarly to the friends, we were eager to show people like Mia's parents who are trying so hard and just always getting it wrong to varying degrees, sometimes only slightly, sometimes catastrophically. It's so important to listen to your kids and adjust your expectations based on what they need and what they're capable of at that time.

It was very, very important to us to show how damaging an eating disorder can be to someone, and to their relationships.

You have two very famous, successful parents who seem completely in your corner – how do you navigate any nepo baby discourse that might be thrown at you?

I think just trying to keep it all in perspective. Do I think I'm here because I'm good at what I do? Yes. Do I think I would have had the opportunity to do what I do on a professional scale without my parents success and influence? I have no idea. It would have taken much longer and been much harder – if it had happened at all.

So I'm trying to navigate it by keeping it at the forefront of my mind, and I suppose by trying to pay that luck and opportunity forward by taking my job seriously, being kind, doing my job well. Not just being grateful, but doing something constructive with that gratitude and hoping and striving to make the industry a more inclusive place.

After your run-in with Boris Johnson as a teenager, would you say politics informs your writing or what you want to see on screens?

Definitely, I think it particularly informs the drive to make a really diverse show. And to have that at the very forefront of our minds while making it and casting. Also the queerness of the show, I think is a reaction to the trajectory of the world the last few years – which ain’t great. So we made what is now, I suppose, quite an idealistic show, and I think it shouldn't be idealistic at all. It should be somewhat inevitable.

It feels like shows like Everything Now are providing wish fulfilment – how we’d like things to have been like at school in terms of acceptance of different identities and sexualities.

It was very important to me, and all of us going into the show, that no one's sexuality would ever become a plot. I think many, maybe most, of the key romantic relationships portrayed in the show are queer relationships. But at no point does anyone need to come out or assign a label. The turmoil that arises out of those relationships never has to do with the gender or the sex of either people in the relationship.

So yeah, I suppose it’s quite an idealised world in that regard, that I thought it would be really powerful for today's queer and straight youth to see. And to feel that maybe that world is possible, where sexuality is just a part of who you are – it doesn't need to be something that makes your life harder.

How far has the industry come in terms of improving representation of different sexualities on screen, do you think?

I think it has come very far. And I'm really grateful that we're able to be part of that forward trajectory – that movement and that conversation. But it's sort of become a bit of a joke that a lot of Netflix shows are becoming queer dramas. But teenage life is a queer drama for loads of young people nowadays. So what better time to shine a light and celebrate that, and educate people, if you can, while you're at it?

Will there be a second season of Everything Now?

I would love to do one, personally. So I would encourage everyone to keep fingers crossed!

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Everything Now is available to watch now on Netflix.