Writer-director Megan Park on making the show of the summer and how she gave “misunderstood” young people the show they deserve
Ella Rubin (left) and Bo Bragason in “Sterling Point” Sabrina Lantos/Prime
Writer-director Megan Park may have created the runaway hit of the summer with the teen drama Sterling Point, which captures all of Gen Z’s messiness to a T. So how is she celebrating her success? She’s trapped in bed with a busted foot.
“Funny enough, I broke my toe at the premiere of the show. And then because my toe’s all messed up, I was walking funny and twisted my ankle. So now the whole foot is just done,” Park says by Zoom from her bed in California. “It’s not the easiest to carry around a two-year-old like this,” the mom of two adds, “but I’ll be OK. If I lose my toe, it’s a memory.”
A native of Canada and a former actor who appeared in teen fare like ABC’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Life With Derek, and A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song, Park moved behind the camera in her twenties. As a writer and director, she created Fallout, the 2021 school-shooting drama starring Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler. And most recently, she wrote and directed My Old Ass, a time-bending coming-of-age dramedy starring Maisy Stella (The End of Oak Street, Nashville) and Aubrey Plaza playing the young and old versions of the same complicated Canadian girl.
Sterling Point represents a return to Canadian cottage country for Park. Produced by teen drama powerhouses Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of The O.C. and Gossip Girl fame, the series is set in Muskoka, Canada, the same district where Park spent summers growing up, and where she filmed My Old Ass. The show centers on New York high schooler Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin), whose estranged grandfather has died, leaving Annie and her brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo) a lake house and a Canadian island. Jacobson travels to Muskoka to learn more about her family and the mother she never knew, and finds a cabin with a composting toilet, new friends, and Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), a sister she didn’t know she had. Since the show’s Aug. 5 release, it’s remained in Prime Video’s Top Five most popular series, a testament to Park’s ability to reflect Gen Z viewers back to them in a way that feels real.
“There’s so much content out there now. It’s so accessible that the bullshit radar is pretty high for Gen Z. As it should be,” Park says. “There’s a layer of, hopefully, authenticity in Sterling Point. Not talking down to them, and tackling real subject matter that’s universal, about family and relationships and nature versus nurture and grief. To downplay it for younger people makes no sense to me.”
Park spoke about the genesis of the show, how her early career as an actor impacts her as a showrunner, and the prospect of a second season.
After My Old Ass, what made you decide to tackle a YA show? It’s kind of fun to think about what you can build over eight episodes, eight hours, versus just a movie. It’s also a lot more work, which almost killed me. But I’m still alive.
I come from the world of TV. I spent a lot of time in the YA space when I was acting, so I feel really comfortable in that world and in that format. But I’ve been really passionate about making YA content that feels elevated and real. Why does it have to be really dark or really fluffy? Why can’t it be somewhere in the middle, like life is?
What was your experience with TV growing up? Are there any shows from the past that you’re nodding to in Sterling Point? Funny enough, I grew up without a TV for most of my life. So I feel like my experiences are actually more about watching movies. I watched Degrassi. Let’s be real, that was a big one for me as a Canadian. Whatever the Drake version was. But I watched Dawson’s Creek and My So-Called Life. I went back and watched things for the first time. I hadn’t seen the first season of The O.C. or Gossip Girl, so I went back and watched those as prep.
You were on some pretty well-known shows — The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Life With Derek. What inspired you to leave acting for writing and directing? Truthfully, there was a boredom factor that hit me after a while. That era, creativity wasn’t at the forefront of every decision. It was very much, “Don’t ask questions. Stand on your mark, say the lines we tell you to say, and then go sit and wait at video village.” It felt like there was this machine that was like, “This is how many episodes we have to churn out. This is how quickly we have to make them.” We’d never leave the soundstage.
I don’t think I would have continued acting anyway, because I don’t think I was that good at acting. It wasn’t until I started meeting writers and directors who were doing [TV] in a really interesting and cool way. It was like that lightning bolt thing. I was like, “Oh shit, this was what it was all leading towards.” I’ve never looked back. But being trapped as a teenager on a teen show for many years did frustrate me enough to want to do the YA genre justice.
You worked with Shailene Woodley on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. What are your strongest memories from filming? Secret Life opened a lot of doors for me. It got me my green card and it taught me a work ethic that was really helpful. I was not spending my twenties in L.A. partying. I was working my fucking ass off. There’s a specific episode that does haunt me. Shae and I laugh a lot about an episode called “Just Say Me.” I think [my character] was advocating for masturbating. I blacked it out because it was so traumatizing. There was like a scene in a cafeteria where I think I start a chant? I remember feeling so uncomfortable and icked out. I was like, “I hate these lines and I don’t want to do this.”
I never watched the show back as I was making it. Shae and I keep seeing all these rewatch podcasts, and we’re like, “We should do a first-time watch.” If you were like, “What happened with Shailene Woodley’s character,” I’d be like, “I don’t fucking know.” And same with my own character. There were some interesting moments on that show, for sure.