'Everything's Gonna Be Okay': Adam Faison says bugs serve as a 'coping mechanism', an 'allegory' to the tale
Josh Thomas' freeform series 'Everything's Gonna Be Okay' explores mental illness, sexuality, gender identification, autism, and relationships through comedy. The show has managed to not just bring laughs but involve relatable events in a dysfunctional family that'll have you tune in every week. The show's narrative has allowed each character to be a pawn in bringing to light the importance of having conversations rather than standing on idle ground about society's unwanted judgment.
In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), Adam Faison talks about what the audience could take away from the show, how he felt about portraying a character in a show that explores controversial subjects in such a unique manner and most importantly - what we've wondered so much about - what the bugs bring to the characters.
In the show, Nicholas' (Josh Thomas) character is an entomologist and while the cute bugs make for a great cameo, what does it bring to the narrative. "I guess in a way they feel a little bit like a grounding factor for many of us. It's really like an allegory and a grounding symbol for Nicholas throughout the show," says Faison.
"They tend to be the one thing that Nicholas can really feel grounded in throughout the series. There are times when he's having difficult conversations and he's playing with the bugs, or, you know, when we break up, he has the bugs all over his face. So there's sort of a coping mechanism for him throughout this series, which I think is really kind of beautiful. Otherwise, as I said in society and media, we see bugs as these gross objects, but he really sorts of subverts that and gives them a new narrative."
While the comedy brings about laughter in the quirkiest of ways, Faison spoke about what he hopes the audience takes away from the show. "I would hope that they would take away that they may see different people on the screen than themselves, and maybe they might not exactly have related to these people as they first saw them, or when they first saw the promotional or the pilot but that hopefully eventually they'll take away a sense of connectivity with these characters, and find out that, maybe they're not so different after all.
They are human and they just so happen to have identities, like humans, have identities, but at the end of the day, we all are more connected than we think - more than what meets the eye."
Being part of an intricate narrative that narrates the exploration of sexuality through the queer community and from the point of view of autistic individuals, Faison says he didn't feel the pressure one would expect. "I didn't really feel as much pressure because I felt like Josh has a really great grasp on queer voices. I'd seen, 'Please Like Me' before that, and it just felt like he was really trying to authentically represent different voices. I don't think he thinks of us as a monolith but I think he says, these are just humans and they may not be able to represent everybody, but they are just living their lives."
"And if people see themselves reflected in them, that's great, but he's not trying to make us a monolith to represent blanketly everybody in our community. So that made me feel a little bit less or feel pretty much not any pressure going into this cause he was always just like, bring your honesty, bring your truth to these characters," explained Faison.'
Everything's Gonna Be Okay' airs every Thursday at 7:30c on Freeform.