‘Insatiable’ Star Debby Ryan, Creator Lauren Gussis Defend The Show’s True Intentions

It’s been three weeks since Netflix released the trailer for its new satirical series, “Insatiable,” about a bullied teenage girl named Patty (Debby Ryan) who loses a lot of weight and finally starts to be treated nicer by those around her. Between then and now, before Friday’s release of Season 1, a major conversation about the comedy’s themes has erupted. Ryan and creator Lauren Gussis spoke with International Business Times about the backlash the trailer faced, what they’re hoping viewers will get out of “Insatiable” as a whole, and the healing they received from making the show.

People have called out the series for fat-shaming and have said that it’s triggering to those dealing with eating disorders. An online petition, which mentions both of those comments, to stop the Netflix show from being released has garnered over 220,000 signatures, based on the trailer.

After seeing all of the backlash, Ryan responded with an Instagram post, writing, “Twelve years into my own struggles with body image, struggles that took me in and out of terrible places I never want to go again, things I choose every day to leave behind, I was drawn to this show’s willingness to go to real places about how difficult and scary it can be to move through the world in a body, whether you’re being praised or criticized for its size.”

Aside from a few flashbacks to a fatsuit-wearing Ryan as “Fatty Patty,” as her schoolmates used to call her, the show mainly focuses on Patty’s current life as a thin teenage girl trying to figure out what she wants and who she is now that she’s gotten what she always thought would make her happy — what society has told her would make her happy.

In the trailer, viewers see Patty wanting revenge on all of her bullies now that she’s in the body she wants, but that’s just where the story begins, creator Lauren Gussis explained to International Business Times.

“The trailer is its own piece of art. It's not the same art, [but at the same time, it is],” Gussis told IBT. “I think on some level, it is the set-up of the show. And it’s clear from the tone, I thought it was clear from the tone, that it’s a satire. It’s the jumping-off point. I think in order to satire something, you need to show the trope that you’re commenting on. So, on some level, we show the trope, but what we quickly will find out in the show is that Patty gets on the train to Revenge Town, but does not end up in Revenge Town. She ends up in a whole other country. In a trailer, you don’t want to give it all away.”

Instead of ending up in Revenge Town, Patty finds her way into the world of pageantry, thanks to her lawyer-turned-pageant-coach Bob (Dallas Roberts). She decides that the best revenge is to prove her worth to both herself and those around her by winning pageants, but along the way, she discovers a lot about herself and what’s behind a lot of her emotions. Well, viewers do at least. Patty still has a lot to learn.

Though the trailer was meant to act as an introduction to the series, Ryan didn’t realize it wouldn’t come across as having the same tone as the series as a whole because she “was very much informed by knowing this whole story,” she told IBT.

“So, I didn’t pick up that tonally it didn’t represent the story, it represented her origin,” she said. “Which is very important and I think, obviously, a very large theme in the show is the damage that bullying and fat-shaming and pre-judging people and societal pressures and our own pressures on ourselves and expectations, that is, that’s so real. That’s a very important through-line in the story and we can’t play the truth without that.”

The Disney Channel alum said it was important for her to remember when the trailer was released that creatives — writers, artists and actors — made “Insatiable,” while editors and marketing people made the trailer. “It was different people telling different versions of a story,” she said.

While Gussis is so glad the trailer’s sparking a conversation around the issues the show’s dealing with, “the troubling news is that I so deeply relate to all of the feelings of not-enoughness around food and body,” she said.

She created this Netflix show as a way to tell her own story, which she shared a part of on Instagram, writing, “When I was 13, I was suicidal. My best friends dumped me, I was bullied, and I wanted revenge.”

She continued that she developed an eating disorder and “the kind of rage that makes you want to do dark things.” That’s how Patty and her story were born. Gussis, who was a writer and producer on “Dexter” before creating this show, thinks it’s important for people to tell their truth and this is hers. She told IBT that she and the rest of the “Insatiable” team have to simply “trust that once people see the show, they will feel seen and they will feel heard and they will feel all the things that they want to feel,” even if they felt the opposite from the trailer.

“So much of why I wrote this show was this feeling of not enough and trying to channel all of those feelings into the avatar of Patty, who’s like this demon of my former bullied teenager, like walking in the world and getting to act out all of the crazy fever dream revenge, rage fantasies,” she told IBT. “But also gets to act out all the heartache. So, I deeply understand those issues, and so when people were upset about it, I had so much compassion and just wanted to like call all of them and be like, ‘I know, sweetie, I know. I get it. Deeply.’”

This series is meant to act as a “cautionary tale about how damaging it can be to believe the outsides are more important — to judge without going deeper,” Gussis wrote in her Instagram post.

A point that Ryan wanted to make sure people realized is that the trailer makes it seem like Patty is all of a sudden a happy person because she’s thin, but that’s not the case.

“Probably 45 seconds into being skinny, Patty maybe has 45 seconds of happiness in the show,” Ryan said. “It’s not actually that she gets skinny and then is happy, and then people treat her well. I think that at no point does that happen, and I think anyone who thinks that and says that, very clearly has not seen our show. I think that the show that we made is about what happens when you get that promotion, that job, that relationship, lose that last 10 or 70 or three pounds, which looks different for every person. And then you have the promotion and the boyfriend and maybe the body and you forgot to take care of your mental health.”

She continued: “It will always be something, and I think speaking to that and saying, if you have dreamed that your life will begin if and when you achieve a certain thing, in Patty’s case, she did not set out to achieve this. This was a thing that happened to her because of her tipping point, but I think her then reconciling that deep unhappiness and that need for more, that is where the story begins.”

That’s why Patty is so enraged when the series begins, Gussis explained. She’s mad that people treat her differently now that she’s thinner, even though she’s still the same person. She’s angry because she thought having a different body would make her happy, and it doesn’t.

She thinks this “not because we as a show believe in these messages,” Gussis said, but because “these are messages that get fed” to people in society.

“I didn’t make the trope up,” she said. “The trope exists. I want to comment on what happens when you believe it. And she believed it and it didn’t make her happy and now she’s mad. It’s the messages that I got fed through my childhood. It’s like all the pop culture that I took in.”

Ryan opened up about personally knowing Patty’s feeling of anger, for many different reasons. “I am mad in general,” she said. “I am mad at myself for believing lies that society taught me. I’m mad that sometimes if I go to the grocery store and I see a person on the cover of a magazine when I’m trying to check out and buy gum, I’m mad that I’m comparing myself, and I’m mad that I believed those lies. I’m mad that it will never be enough.

“But also, with that anger, we made a show,” Ryan said.

“Insatiable” Season 1 comes out on Netflix on Friday.