How The Insatiable Creator Channeled Her 'Pain' And 'Insanity' Into Biting, Uncomfortable Satire

Insatiable has been building a lot of noise since Netflix dropped its first trailer last month. The minute-and-a-half preview was enough to send shockwaves across Twitter, with people accusing the show of fat-shaming and playing into harmful stereotypes about weight and aesthetics. “The show Insatiable on @netflix looks like a part of utter trash. Don't watch shows where people wear fat suits. Don't watch shows where they attempt to turn fat phobia and hatred into a joke,” one user wrote in a thread.


right after, a Change.Org petition urging for its cancellation was launched, gathering over 231,000 signatures as of press time. “It perpetuates not only the toxicity of diet culture, however the objectification of women's bodies,” the petition reads, before declaring that Insatiable “will cause consuming food disorders” and objectify females — all of this based on the trailer alone.


Stars Debby Ryan and Alyssa Milano and creator Lauren Gussis were quick to stand by their work. “The show is a cautionary tale about how causing harm to it might be to believe the outsides are more critical — to judge without going deeper. Please give the show a chance," Gussis’s personal statement read.


The critics who did give the show a chance largely panned the show. Countless outlets, including Variety, Vulture, Vox, and Fast Company, exclaimed that the show was even worse than the trailer made it out to be. “Teenagers deserve better,” New York Times editor Eleanor Stanford wrote.


Well, imagine the trailer a trigger warning. In the event you are sensitive to the dialogue in that clip, this may not be the show for you. The show's dark humor and vitriolic tone is pervasive, just how its showrunner intended. It's a satire, and as such, unabashedly uses the terrible things people do and mention to one another as punchlines group in attempt to "bring to light things in society that really need to be taken care of Gussis told MTV News.


So, yes, there really is fat-shaming in Insatiable, with central character Patty (Ryan) subjected to horrible names and insults — “Smells like bacon,” one girl says as “Fatty Patty” runs by — and characters reinforcing the belief that her self-worth is inversely proportional to her weight. Ryan also wears a rather contested fat suit for the handful of flashback scenes. (It’s worth noting that this was a completely conscious decision on Gussis’s part. “I never wanted to [use a different actress for those scenes] because then, to me, that could be sending the message that you are actually a different person whenever you lose extra weight, and I think for me, the show is about showing that no matter what you look like on the outdoor, you’re still the same person.") There’s also shaming about sexuality and social class, bits about pedophilia, glaring mistreatment of the disabled, and more themes generally believed problematic.


“I developed a biting and dark sense of humor as a way to cope with my own insecurity because if I was laughing, I felt safe, and thus this was an extension of that, on some level,” Gussis mentioned. And thus just like the satire of 1988’s cult classic Heathers, in which teens deal with their bullies by murdering them, none of what’s presented is intended to be taken as real-world truths, and the show doesn’t try to debate whether it’s better to be fat or skinny, gay or straight, prosperous or poor. It's a show that explores our insecurities, why we have them, and what they can do to us.


Inspired by her own experience as a binge eater, physical exercise bulimic, and restrictor, Gussis realized that letting go of these self-worth and weight equations was critical to her recovery. Group in attempt to get better, she had to trim the very rationalizations her series is accused of perpetuating and turn inward.


"I got those messages for so long that the outsides were what counted, however what if somebody looks conventionally cute in the way that the messages of my childhood and all the teen movies that I grew up with, and then their insides are still not what they require to be?" Gussis said.


So Gussis began where we've began several times before — big girl loses weight and becomes pretty — nevertheless then turns the trope on its head whenever things don't magically and instantly get better for Patty. And she's not the only one battling inner demons.


"Every single character is insatiable. They all have a hole that they’re attempting to fill with something from the outdoors ... And I realized that if thematically the show were to really be working on all cylinders I wanted each and every character to have that," Gussis mentioned. And thus, each character is an over-the-top cliché of their suppressed insecurity, which they are relentlessly demeaned for during the season.


Milano's Coralee Armstrong hides her trailer-trash past with nice clothes and her lawyer spouse, Bob (Dallas Roberts), who cites loving his partner as proof that he's not gay, while Patty’s best friend Nonnie (Kimmy Shields) might be in love with Patty, yet uses their close relationship to mask her crush. And Patty replaces her lust for food with a lust for Bob, who is also her pageant coach, and the list goes on, building a conglomerate of every teen-movie stereotype you could imagine interwoven into one meticulously foolish and especially heightened world.


The one character who descends from a place of self-assurance shows up about halfway by way of the season — and she acts as a healthy counterpoint to Patty. Dee (Ashley D. Kelley), a plus-sized, lesbian aesthetics queen who can't be bothered by insults, states the show's thesis almost whenever she arrives: "Being skinny don't mean shit if you're ugly on the inside."


Patty may find validation in her newly slimmed look, nevertheless her inner ugly — her anger toward her former bullies — urges her to do bad things in the name of revenge. While she's treating each person else ugly, she requires to be treated pretty.


As it turns out, Patty isn't a unsympathetic character because of her weight, as critics feared; unsympathetic because she is a hypocrite.


And it's not just Patty who plays into the hypocrisy; it's each person. Coralee desperately hides her past, yet has no problem throwing gay slurs at Bob as he questions his sexuality, and while Bob is affected by those names, he also keeps it up and continues to torment others for their differences.


The result is a web of characters who are both oppressed and oppressive. "Everybody in the show is a giant hypocrite," Gussis mentioned, an allusion to the duplicity that we all try not to fall into, however inevitably do at some point: Despite knowing the pain of our own insecurities, we can still be judgmental of others.


And it might hard to be able to see that happening so blatantly on TV because it taps into some very sensitive parts of being human. "I, naturally, never hope to be hurtful, although I do think that some days pain is the cost of growth,” Gussis mentioned, later adding, "The solution to darkness is more light [and] laughter makes that easier … and if that transition causes a bit of discomfort, then I think that's healthy because without discomfort we don't grow and change."


For those who can performer name the show’s particular brand of black comedy, the blunt reinforcement of those stereotypes illuminates how wrong we are any time we expect our outsides to cure our insides. "The only people who just be growing and changing are the ones who get real with themselves. Everybody else sort of keeps it up and continues to spin in this cycle of looking for outdoor validation and coming up short," Gussis mentioned.


Meanwhile, there's habitually Dee, who confidently embodies the enlightenment that comes with being truly and passionately ourselves. "What is the dream to be chasing?" Gussis wondered. "Isn't the way to transform really to be the most 'you' you could be?"


It was for Gussis, at least, and she hopes that will be the case for others also. "I sort of determined I have to put all my pain out on the table, all of it, all of my insanity, the fever-dream of what I think is funny, all of my vulnerability in the hopes that maybe it will touch someone else and make them feel much less alone," she mentioned. "Even just one individual, if one individual sees the show and is like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, I’m not as weird as I thought!’ Then I’ve done my job."