Sterling Point Creator Megan Park on Portraying Gen Z Authentically and Her Dream Season 2 Cameo

As a culture, we often debate the death of the romantic comedy. But have we ever stopped to ask where all our soapy YA series have gone? Plentiful in the early aughts, shows like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, and The O.C. were rife with familial secrets, opposing male love interests, and angsty female leads—not to mention they were deliciously watchable too. Just when I thought the golden age of the teen drama was behind us, Prime Video released Sterling Point.

From My Old Ass director Megan Park, the hit series follows 17-year-old Annie (played by Ella Rubin), a well-off, erudite city girl who decamps to a picturesque Canadian island, desperate to learn more about her dead adoptive mother. After the passing of her grandfather, his cryptic posthumous letters guide her to a long-lost sister and an endless well of family secrets.

Park—whose directorial debut, The Fallout, starred Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler—has become a teenage whisperer of sorts, heralded by critics and audiences alike for the way her work portrays the idiosyncrasies of the Gen Z experience. She doesn’t pander to young people or assume she understands them outright. “I think I’m just writing [Sterling Point] from a place of seeing everybody as people first,” she tells ELLE. “I’m not thinking about it as a YA story. And I think that’s maybe where people get it wrong.”

Produced by Park alongside Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, Sterling Point calls to mind the sun-soaked languor of The Summer I Turned Pretty and uses the Canadian lakeside as a plot device, à la Every Year After and Heated Rivalry. With the early-2000s-inspired marketing materials to match, viewers have even begged Amazon to bring back the 22-episode season arcs once commonplace on The CW. Lucky for them, the series has just been renewed for a second season. The jury is still out on the extended episodic run, but Park herself is game: “I’m down.”

Below, ELLE spoke to Park about how her time on The Secret Life of the American Teenager influenced her approach to Sterling Point, the One Tree Hill star she’d love to cast in season 2, and why the themes of her next film (which stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Zoë Kravitz) have nothing to do with young adulthood, but rather a “second coming of age.”

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How does the buzz around Sterling Point compare to the buzz around My Old Ass?

This feels crazier in the best possible way. I’m actually off all social media right now, which has been the best thing for my mental health. I’ve gotten a little sneak peek of the love, which has been so beautiful and cool to see. People are all of a sudden like, “Oh, my God, Grace from Secret Life [of the American Teenager] is directing movies?” They’re finding The Fallout. They’re finding My Old Ass. The show feels like it’s taken off in a way that my other little indie projects haven’t yet.

Sterling Point stands out among other recent YA shows. The focus is less on the romantic lives of each character but more on how their families shape their personhood. What about the themes of family, both chosen and biological, interested you the most in developing this series?

I think it was two things. It was the desire to make a YA show that wasn’t purely centered around romance, because I think that, at least for me, romance certainly wasn’t the [biggest] part of my high school experience.

There’s a lot of adoption in my family. My mom’s adopted. My dad has two siblings: one who’s adopted and one who’s not. I’ve only ever met, besides my children, two people—outside of my mom, dad, and sister—that are biologically related to me. The rest of my family, it’s all through adoption. There’s never really been this vibe in my family about, like, finding the biological family. A lot of people [who] have come into my life have been like, “Does that drive you crazy?” I’ve always been like, “It doesn’t drive me crazy, actually, at all.” I also totally understand the other side of it, too, the desire to search to find that, but I feel like that’s the story that’s told more often.

I wanted to show somebody who the part about being adopted wasn’t the bump for them. That was just part of who they were. That wasn’t part of Annie’s uncertainty. That was actually something she was totally fine with. She only feels like an adopted child for the very first time when she realizes Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle)
is biologically related to Steven (Jay Duplass), which is why she has such [a] visceral reaction. I just love the idea of exploring it through two sisters. They’re both defined by the same mother, who was a mother to them in different ways, both biologically and otherwise. So yeah, just all those things combined.

Why do you think you’re drawn to coming-of-age stories?

My next movie is not at all focused in the YA space. It feels more personal to where I’m at in my life. It’s very much about parenthood and motherhood and aging parents, but at the same time, those are all new experiences to people my age, so it’s like a second coming of age, you know?

Thinking of Annie and Ramona in my mind, it wasn’t like, “Okay, but let’s not forget, Ramona’s 16.” I think you almost have to reverse-engineer in the writers’ room. You come up with the people, and you come up with a story, and then sometimes, people’s reactions to situations are going to be bigger or whatever because it’s the first time they’re experiencing something. But I’m not thinking about it as a YA story. And I think that’s maybe where people get it wrong.

Much of your work features beloved millennial and Gen Z cultural moments or collective memories (like the “One Less Lonely Girl” sequence in My Old Ass and Connor’s Camp Rock 2-themed birthday party in Sterling Point). How did you go about choosing these references?

That’s where we looked to either the actors or the younger writers in the writers’ room or people that we know. My au pair is 22, and she’s been the most incredible resource. In My Old Ass, the Justin Bieber sequence was me going to Maisy being like, “What was that concert for you?” Because for me, it was going to see Britney Spears. It’s a collaboration. Anything that feels really Gen Z came out of, I think, me being open-minded. I love to be educated on this stuff, you know? I think it’s funny, like when someone sent me the [Camp Rock 2] march thing. I did not know the Poot lore—that was all new to me. I love being open to hearing about all this stuff and then trying to include it in a way that feels organic for them.

One Tree Hill star Hilarie Burton recently penned a sweet tribute to you about your decades-long friendship, the way you would commiserate “over the state of teen dramas,” and why so many men were “in charge of stories about teen girls.” How has that impacted your work today? Is there anything you experienced on Secret Life you hoped to rectify in Sterling Point?

Hilarie and I and other people from [One Tree Hill] have talked a lot. They had a really shitty experience on that show. Hilarie has been so supportive and always reads everything I write. I want Hilarie [in] season 2. I’m like, you’re already up here, girl. You’re already chilling at the cottage.

On [The Secret Life of the American Teenager], the dialogue that I was saying most times didn’t feel like how a real person would talk. I didn’t have a say in wardrobe or things like that. The most important thing for me [on set] is making sure the actors feel like they have a voice, and that it’s a really safe creative space for them. I just don’t believe in hierarchies on set. I love actors. I come from that side of it, and I really know how vulnerable it can be to be a young actor, and I really want to protect that. I just really try to create the best atmosphere on set for them.

People have really taken a liking to the dialogue on the show in particular.

My favorite tweet, by the way—and I don’t know who wrote this, but Ella sent it to me—said, “Thank you for giving us empathetic real characters. On any other drama, Annie would have found out about Ramona and the mom and would have been, like, fuck you for killing mom with your fat ass newborn head.” I was like, that’s so funny, because, yes, in 2003 that would have been the fight they had.

How did you go about directing the show’s romantic sequences? The goodbye that Ellis and Annie share in episode 7, in particular, was deeply moving.

Anytime there’s anything, like, from a hug on, there’s always an intimacy coordinator [on set]. It’s always a closed set, and a super protected, safe space. I’m not a word-perfect director. There are certain moments you have to hit in the scene, and some of the scenes are exactly as written, and then a lot of them have a lot of improv, and then some of them are almost purely improv. With that scene, they knew the beats to get. Some of it was written; some of those sweet little moments were improvised.

Ella is this endless well of emotion. Take after take, I kept being like, “Are you good? Are you running dry yet?” Every take was different. We probably did that eight times, and she was just able to tap into that emotional well. And Jacob [Whiteduck-Lavoie], too, every single take. I will say, you’re the first person I’m saying this to: The chin tilt—that was all Jacob. [He] just did that, and we were all like, oh.

In the closet?

In the closet.

Was the moment where he pulls her in improvised as well?

I don’t think it was scripted. I don’t remember what the script was, but the pull happened on the day in the blocking. Everyone was just figuring it out. I think we knew we wanted to choose some kind of thing. The chin tilt, that was all Jacob’s move.

Ellis and Rory are quite modern male love interests. How did you go about developing their characters?

It was important to me that both of these men were good guys. Annie’s not the type of person who’s gonna end up with somebody who’s a really horrible human being. We wanted it to be more about them representing two paths that she could take. Rory, for all the guys in New York that she comes across, he actually is kind of an amazing choice for her as maybe a first love. He really cares about her. He understands having a sort of fucked-up family dynamic. He has panic attacks like she does. There’s a lot that they connect over in a very deep way.

And then with Ellis, I think it’s interesting because he really quiets her in a way that she’s never been quieted before. He’s such a Canadian boy. When Ella was like, “I can’t tell if you love me or hate me,” that’s such a conversation I feel like every Canadian girl has with a boy at some point, because you can’t tell. They’re so stoic in the sweetest way.

Also, I think there’s a part of her subconscious that is like, “I’m making the choice [that] my mom came back and made with Joe.” I think in her subconscious, Ellis represents that.

What I think is interesting about a potential season 2 is that she’s now getting further in the experiment than her mom ever did, potentially, to a degree. And so, is it sustainable? What is she gonna do? Is it gonna be fulfilling? It was just two different paths that she could take [where] neither one is disastrous. They’re just both unknown.

What would you most like to see in season 2?

I definitely think meeting Oona’s (Bo Bragason) mom is really important. We also had this really great storyline about Oona and another woman that she had a thing with during the time that Ramona was just kind of disappeared. I think that Ramona could take to the New York life in a very unexpected way, [which] could be interesting. There’s a lot to explore there.

Tell me about working with Maisy Stella (star of My Old Ass) and her sister Lennon on the music for the series.

The Stella sisters, my special sauce. Did you know [Lennon’s] also the voice of the dead mom on the tapes? I knew I wanted her to cover “Rain” before I even wrote the fucking show. When she sent me that, I cried for, like, two hours when I heard her version of it. It’s so beautiful.

Maisy and Lennon have been a part of each of the projects I’ve ever done. Maisy had actually covered [“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”] for me for a pitch video for this other movie I was gonna do at some point, just on her iPhone or something, and I’ve always loved it. I remember I sent it to one of the producers, and they were obsessed with it. So that was a no-brainer. I just called her, like, “Yo, would you re-record that?” It was fun; she [also] got to come to set when she was in Toronto during TIFF. It was so special seeing her there.

Do you have a favorite book that Maple reads on the show?

[The] Drama of the Gifted Child.

Have you seen people calling for Sterling Point to have 22-episode seasons, like the shows from the early 2000s?

Wait, really? That’s interesting. I heard some people say this show reminded them of those series. Like Secret Life. We used to do fucking, oh my god, like 28 episodes or something a year. I mean, listen. I’m down. Someone call Amazon, [Jeff] Bezos. I don’t know.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.