For decades, Mark Duplass has dipped his toe time and again into the water of roughly every form of media, whether onscreen (“Creep,” “The Morning Show”), as a director (“Cyrus,” “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”), or as a producer on the vast number of titles inhabiting the library that is Duplass Brothers Productions. Now, with creative partner Mel Eslyn (“Biosphere”), the duo has brought to life a new show, “Penelope,” one which left an impact at Sundance earlier this year and is now at home on Netflix. With star Megan Stott (“Little Fires Everywhere”), the show follows a teen as she escapes society to start life anew, meeting a handful of colorful characters along the way and learning as much about herself as what it takes to survive (read our review).
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The Playlist’s Brian Farvour sat down with this wonderful trio to discuss the show. The four-year journey to bring “Penelope” to life was something Duplass discussed, saying:
“I was sequestered away during the pandemic and looking to express some of my relentless creative brain, and I sort of stumbled on this idea of Penelope, not in any intellectual way; I was struck by this vision of this 16-year-old girl running out into the woods to start a new life for herself, and I think what I realized now is that I was feeding into this desire that that I have to do that all of us, to untether not only from our phones and our technology addictions but also the ability to just be with ourselves in the sense of quiet, which is something that we’ve lost.
I used to tour myself as a singer-songwriter, and I would live in my van. This was before cell phones, and I would spend, like, two or three days where I wouldn’t talk to anybody! I can’t do that anymore because I have my phone as this crutch, and Penelope, you know, is oddly reflective of that. It’s also sprung from watching this little reality show called “Alone,” and what I found and discovered is that not only was I riveted by it, but my children were riveted, my parents were riveted, my wife was riveted; we’re always struggling with our family and friends to find something we can share to watch, so the idea was to try and make a show that could try and feed into that and provide a role model for my daughters.
I decided, okay, let’s go ahead and take this thing around town and start the bidding war on this very unique, original show, which didn’t happen; some people were interested in making it, but only if we changed it drastically, and some people were very sweet and said, ‘This is beautiful and unique and poetic, and are you crazy, we can’t make it unless there’s a murder in the first 30 seconds!’ Then we were left with this option of self-financing, and we just said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and that’s when I really turned the project over to Mel, who agreed to direct all these episodes!”
Eslyn: “I was very drawn to what Mark first pitched to me because I grew up in Wisconsin in the woods; we never went on vacations; we went camping multiple times a year. My dad, a horticulturist, raised me, and I made my first backpacking trip when I was 17 in the Boundary Waters area, so it just spoke to a part of me that I actually sadly have been distanced from. I live between Seattle and LA, and I’m so in the city, and I have these moments where I catch myself where my heart hurts. And, when I really think about it, it’s because I’ve been away from nature or I haven’t touched grass or put my bare feet on dirt.
There was something very fulfilling about the story of Penelope, and I could see what I could bring to it, having been a 16-year-old girl myself. And I love this idea of exploring this primalism that we all have inside of us, but through the eyes of a teenage girl at the exact moment when she’s trying to define who she is.”
Stott: “I remember when I first was sent the script, and I had never read or seen anything like it. It was something that I just felt so connected to. “Penelope” is something that’s really close to my heart because I grew up like the rest of us did. I went camping every weekend. My mom was teaching me how to forge. We would go camping, hiking, fishing, literally whatever we could in nature, we tried to do.
The minute I read the scripts, I said, “This is going to be different. This is going to change the perspective of young people’s lives and hopefully inspire some people. My main point was, “I want this to be something that young people can look up to and see that it’s okay to have something different in their lives and want something different.”
As far as getting the role was concerned:
Stott: “I was so excited for something so new and something so different and to see it where it is now. It literally feels like it was yesterday when we filmed it. I couldn’t be more proud of the work that we all did.”
In addition to foraging classes, as well as Stott’s pre-existing knowledge of this skill, preparation and on-set education was key:
Eslyn: “I wanted to be knowledgeable to be able to point and say, ‘You can eat that.’ I learned how to build my own shelters, and I had a notebook with drawings that I then handed to the production designer and said, ‘She’s going to build this.’ Then, they literally on the day would go forage the supplies, or the day before from the environment we were shooting in, and they would give Megan instructions, and she’d come in and do a bit of the building. We’d go away, and they’d build a little bit more. But, it was all the supplies around us, and 50% of that was Megan actually building these things herself.”
Stott: “I didn’t really have Instagram until I was 16 in my first job. I didn’t have YouTube. I didn’t have Vine. I didn’t have any of that. So I felt very detached. I have always wanted other things, so I’m an actress now. Obviously, I wanted very different things from everybody else. But it was definitely something that I’ve really worked on. I talked to Mel about her thoughts, and we bounced ideas off of each other, which was really nice. Then, the further and further we got, the more it developed, and we were able to have those conversations. So, it was really nice.”
On some of her own challenges on-set:
Stott: “I was a little chilly! I wanted to portray this girl in a beautiful light, but also very emotionally real, as a complicated, curious, and naive person. So, being able to balance all of that all at once was probably the hardest part for me, making sure that I was representing her properly through her struggles, how she strengthens herself, and how she learns how to do certain things.”
After some musing on the intimidation of filming in the Pacific Northwest and the fun of dealing with forest fires, torrential rain, bears, and even a cougar, Duplass took the time to discuss his views on the use of supporting characters within the show:
Duplass: “I personally find myself having a little bit of fatigue with the way that television is structured. We’re just taught by the executives that, well, to keep the audience’s short attention span, we just have to bring in more and more plot points and bring them in earlier and earlier and make them bigger and bigger. In doing so, I think we are in danger of erasing all possibility of subtlety and patience.
So, for us, much of that was about spacing these things out and creating a lot of time in between. In particular, I think our expectations teach us that, for instance, when a young girl goes back to the van of a musician that she meets in a club (as seen in episode 1), bad things will happen. But in our world, in the world of Penelope, which is very similar to the world of backpacking, camping, and hiking, which I know very well, is a world of kindness and connection. It’s a world of looking people in the eyes, and there are no phones anywhere, and there is trust given, and there is trust received because of that. And so, these characters are deliberately meant to, I think, represent a little bit of the way that things could be. And, in my experience, in some regions of society, they still are.”
When asked about the possibility of a season 2, Duplass did respond:
“We have a couple of seasons in our heads, and we know what we want to do, and we know what we want to make. And we hope that enough people come to see this so that I don’t have to pay out-of-pocket again next time!”
The Playlist Presents – Mark Duplass, Mel Eslyn, and Megan Stott’s Film/TV/Book/Music Recommendation Playlist:
1.) “How To with John Wilson” (HBO) (Mark’s pick)
2.) “Painting with John” (HBO) (Mark’s pick)
3.) “Perfect Days” (2023) – Directed by Wim Wenders (Mark’s pick)
4.) “The Anxious Generation” (2024) – Written by Jonathan Haidt (Mel’s pick)
5.) “His Three Daughters” (2023) – Directed by Azazel Jacobs (Mel’s pick)
6.) “New Girl” (Hulu) (Megan’s pick)
7.) “High Potential” (Hulu) (Megan’s pick)
8.) “Good Will Hunting” (1997) – Directed by Gus Van Sant (Megan’s pick)
9.) “Dead Poets Society” (1989) – Directed by Peter Weir (Megan’s pick)
10.) Hozier (Megan’s pick)
This interview has been edited for clarity. “Penelope” is currently streaming on Netflix.
