The Girls On The Bus EPs On Drawing Inspiration From Jack & Bobby, The West Wing And Friday Night Lights
The Girls on the Bus finally hit the road this Thursday on Max.
Premiering with two episodes, the new series follows four journalists — played by Melissa Benoist (Supergirl), Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher), Natasha Behnam (Mayans M.C.) and Christina Elmore (Insecure) — as they cover the Democratic primary from the campaign trail. While they come from different backgrounds and have differing opinions on many hot-button topics, the women find themselves bonding during their travels.
The show's combination of politics, heart, humor and relationship drama, both platonic and romantic, isn't a surprise when you look at the auspices behind it: Amy Chozick and Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) developed the series from a chapter in Chozick's 2018 book Chasing Hillary, about the author's time covering Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign as a political reporter. In addition to that duo, The Girls on the Bus counts showrunner Rina Mimoun (Everwood) and Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter (of Berlanti Productions) among its executive producers.
Below, Plec, Chozick and Mimoun reveal what Berlanti's previous political dramas, Jack & Bobby and Political Animals, share with The Girls on the Bus, and why they think viewers should tune in even if they have election fatigue.
TVLINE | I know that Greg Berlanti is a producer, not a writer, on this, and there is source material that you are working with, but I got a little bit of a Jack & Bobby and Political Animals vibe. So I was wondering if you had any discussions with him about those shows and any lessons that could be applied from those shows to Girls on the Bus as you were crafting it?
AMY CHOZICK | I love that. We all have our own Berlanti stories and relationships, but I actually met him on Political Animals. I was a journalist at The New York Times, and he was working on Political Animals, and we talked a lot about women in power. I love that show so much. I love that you said that, because, to me, [The Girls on the Bus] has a Berlanti heart. It has the DNA of sort of those shows that you mentioned and Everwood and Dawson's [Creek] and all these shows, Brothers & Sisters. It has the DNA and heart of what I think of as a Berlanti show, and I think we're really proud of that.
JULIE PLEC | Speaking of Jack and Bobby, which was criminally, criminally cancelled. In fact, they should just put it back on and remake it right now.
CHOZICK | I, 100% percent — Political Animals was ahead of its time. If it had been a streaming show, it would have been huge.
PLEC | There's this incredible moment — and this was a long time ago so forgive me, I'm going to bastardize it completely — where Jack & Bobby had all these little interstitial stories of people from the future, talking about a moment in the election, and it was a young man telling a story about how he rallied everybody at his campus to, like, take a bus to go vote and how, like, there was a snowstorm or whatever it was. It was such an ordeal to get to vote. And the end of that story was that they made it, and they voted, and the candidate won by like two votes. So that effort they had put in to get out the vote resulted in actual change, and the actor, I'm pretty damn certain, who played that guy, who told that story, was none other than Scott Foley. [Foley co-stars on The Girls on the Bus as a presidential candidate.]
CHOZICK | Carla Gugino was in Political Animals. She played the journalist in Political Animals. There were a lot of full-circle moments.
TVLINE | This series is based on Amy's book, which centered around Hillary Clinton's campaign. How did you come to the decision to focus on fictional candidates rather than setting it either in our present or in the past?
PLEC | The present is just too much of a s–t show to try to capture. I don't know, I think it's a whole truth is stranger than fiction [situation]. We would have jumped the shark just by telling the real story.
TVLINE | You are coming out at a time when we are going through a primary in real life and people are just being bombarded by news and flyers in the mail. What would you say to potential viewers who are exhausted by politics to get them to watch this show?
CHOZICK | We hear a lot about political fatigue. I think our show is an escape from it. Hopefully, our primary and the kind of fictional world we've created is fun and funny and rollicking, and it's like a big, crowded Democratic primary, and it's sort of nothing like what we're living through. And it's funny, we hear a lot about political fatigue, and yet, also, people kind of can't look away. [Laughs] So, hopefully, this is an antidote to the darkness you're seeing on CNN or MSNBC, and it's the fun version. We talk about West Wing a lot, the kind of hopeful, idealist version of what is happening in real life.
RINA MIMOUN | That is the backdrop of our show, for sure, but really, we're a workplace show about a found family. So imagine Dunder Mifflin, if you will, just happens to be this presidential primary, because what you're really coming to see are the stories between these girls and the love stories and the mentor stories. It's such a character-driven show that the backdrop is there to give it specificity and authenticity, but the relationships are what you fall in love with.
CHOZICK | Yeah, Rina and I would always say, "I don't care about football, I don't care about Texas football. I watched every episode of Friday Night Lights. And how do we tap into that?" I care about what's happening in these characters' lives.
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