Fireside Chat, Interview
Darren Star: From "Sex and the City" to "Younger": Coming of Age on Television
- The speaker (Aaron) developed 90210 by pitching a "30-something for teenagers" concept to Fox executives, aiming to address sanitized television and realistic issues like teenage sexuality, drug use, and date rape that were absent from the era's high school dramas.
- Fox paired the speaker with producer Aaron Spelling, leveraging Spelling's resources to launch a series that focused on the universal emotional experiences of high school rather than the condescending tone of previous shows.
- Melrose Place was conceived from the speaker's personal experience living in a West Hollywood apartment building, initially intended to explore the "earnest" transition period between college and adulthood.
- Melrose Place quickly pivoted from a serious drama to an "outrageous soap" after the network realized audiences preferred continuous, serialized storytelling over standalone "issue of the week" episodes.
- The character of a gay man, Matt Fielding, was included to reflect the West Hollywood setting without making his sexuality the central plot conflict, despite network concerns about airing content like male-male kisses.
- The speaker adopted a strategy of filming controversial content (such as the censored kiss) regardless of network rules, betting that the resulting pre-episode controversy would drive viewership.
- The success of Melrose Place as a continuous narrative forced a paradigm shift on 90210, transforming it from an issue-oriented show into a character-driven soap opera.
- Sex and the City was developed as an HBO project intended to function as an "independent film for television" rather than a commercial sitcom, focusing on a female perspective of sex and relationships.
- The show aimed to objectify men rather than women, with many male characters remaining unnamed (e.g., "Mr. Big") to subvert traditional entertainment dynamics.
- The series achieved a lasting cultural impact, influencing fashion trends and popularizing the Cosmopolitan cocktail, though the speaker cautions viewers not to treat the show as a "Bible" for real-life relationships.
- The speaker identifies a common thread across his major hits (90210, Melrose Place, Sex and the City) as the creation of "found families" where characters define themselves through their bonds with each other rather than marriage.
- Younger is based on a book premise regarding a divorced woman in her 40s returning to the workforce after a 12-year hiatus, evolving into a narrative exploring the generational gap between Boomers and Millennials in the age of social media.
- The rise of streaming services has influenced the speaker's writing process for Younger, resulting in an intentionally "bingeable" format with episode-ending hooks designed to encourage immediate follow-through viewing.
- The speaker notes that the current media landscape allows for greater creative risk-taking due to an unprecedented appetite for diverse material across both weekly and streaming platforms.