Lindy West Flips TV’s Fat Tropes

Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal

WBEZ

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Oh hey it's Lindy West!

Lindy's the the executive producer of Shrill, a new Hulu series starring SNL's Aidy Bryant that's based on Lindy's 2016 novel of the same name. And we talk with Lindy about a few of the delightful scenes from the series (including an epic pool party), why Lindy left Twitter, and her forthcoming new book called The Witches Are Coming. She also tells us about how her new Hulu series subverts a common TV trope.

“Usually what we get are weight loss narratives and makeover narratives. And these sort of sad sack stories about either people trying to lose weight and succeeding or trying to lose weight and failing and being sad,” Lindy says.“The whole idea is that there are other ways to live and that you deserve a life that is bigger than that — and that has a scope beyond your body and what it weighs.”

Lindy West y'all!

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen, wherever you get your podcast.
0:40.4	Hey, so this week's interview is about a Hulu show that has some curses and other inappropriate things in it. And I curse a lot and there are other inappropriate things in it. So if there are kids around, you might want to skip
0:45.1	this one, unless you got the headphones. And you can pretend like you're doing something else
0:48.7	with them, like playing with Legos while listening. That's totally cool, Julia.
0:54.1	From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdad. I'm Greta Johnson, and I have to tell you, I am so
0:59.9	fucking thrilled for this week's guest, because if she's not already one of your favorite
1:04.6	people, I'm telling you, she's about to be. Her name is Lindy West, and she has a new TV
1:09.7	show on Hulu called Shrill.
1:12.1	It's loosely based on a memoir, also called Shrill, that she wrote a couple of years ago.
1:16.2	And it's about being a funny, loud woman, and taking up space in the world and confronting trolls, among many other things.
1:23.2	So I figured out a way to link the IP addresses with the user comments, which means that... You've found the location of my troll.
1:28.7	Yeah. Yeah? You stole that moment from me.
1:32.6	Okay. I'm... I'm sorry. I just... I've got all this troll adrenaline because I'm all jacked up.
1:38.3	So, basically, I just got to figure out which... which comments are his and which are just like other terrible people's okay like let's just go through
1:45.5	it here and this one says oink yeah this one says oink oink you little piggy sludge this one says like you
1:50.8	must need a shirt but a climb to stairs you have a snout and a little piggy tail okay this one against
1:56.3	this oink different user but yeah you know you, you don't have to read them all out.
	...

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