Is ‘The Body’ based on a true story? Showrunner explains how her teen years inspired the plot
‘The Body’ follows an all-girls Catholic school dance team whose lives take a disturbing turn after a Halloween night initiation triggers prophetic visions and hysteria. Viewers are now wondering whether the series is based on a true story. Creator Quinn Shephard (‘Under the Bridge’) has clarified that it is not, although it draws from her teenage experiences. She opened up about the inspiration behind ‘The Body’ while speaking to Tudum along with co-showrunner Gina Gammell. The duo drew from their own teenage years to create the coming-of-age story that blends Catholic horror with teen psychodrama.
Quinn said that she felt like an outsider when she was a teenager and found it hard to feel confident about her sexuality, just like Anya (Kristina Bogic). “I’ve been the girl who is very confused about what she’s feeling,” she told the outlet. Like a lot of teenagers, she worried that coming out would threaten the hard-fought friendships she had with other girls. She added, “I literally remember when I was first trying to come out, I was like, ‘Am I going to have to be butch? Am I going to have to cut my hair short and wear rainbow knee socks?’” That experience informed the hot tub scene towards the end of the season. Anya, a closeted teenager, wants to kiss her best friend, Elise (Sara Boustany), but struggles to express her feelings. Instead, she ends up sharing a kiss with Elise and her boyfriend, Steven (Orlando Norman), leaving Elise hurt. Although the scene was developed in the writers' room, Shephard said she became emotional on the day of filming because of how personally connected she felt to it.
Meanwhile, Gammell also mined her school days. She went to an all-girls Christian high school as a non-Christian and said that belonging to a crew while trying to establish an individual identity was personal to both showrunners. “When you’re trying to find your own identity, whether it’s artistic identity, your sexuality, etc., I think that it is really a distinct feeling to be like, ‘Who am I in a group, and who am I as an individual?’ That is so personal to myself and Quinn, but also to most people who grew up in any kind of group environment of girls,” she said.
What’s notable is that ‘The Body’ began as Shephard’s first script when she was in her early 20s, the same year she came out. As per Tudum, she called it her “most personal” work and referred to it as a satire about the trauma of being queer and repressed. Years later, when she revisited her script, she realized it would work well as a dramedy because of the comedy woven into the story. Marie Claire reports that Shephard initially intended to set the story during her own high school years in the 2010s. After examining films from the early 2000s, such as ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Legally Blonde,’ she and Gammell shifted the setting to 2004. All eight episodes of ‘The Body’ were released on Netflix on November 11, and the series holds a TV-MA rating.
