The Australian web series Starting From Now came on the scene almost two years ago and since then it’s built a loyal fan base and garnered over 20 million views. The series follows the lives of four Sydney lesbians—Steph, Darcy, Kristen and Emily—and all the drama that comes with them. Audiences have been eating it up.
Big things are happening for the web series as it heads into its fourth season. The show is coming to LAweb Fest in April, where it’s not only an official selection but has also been nominated in several categories. As well, the entire new season will premiere at the Mardi Gras Film Festival on March 1, followed by a Q&A session with the show’s creator, Julie Kalceff, actor/producer Rosie Lourde, and other cast members.
Ahead of the big day, Julie and Rosie spoke with us about working on the series, lesbian content in Australia, what the new season brings and more.
AfterEllen.com: The title of your web series, Starting From Now, is there a story there?
Julie Kalceff: The title comes from the concept that you always have the best of intentions; that you’re going to turn your life around, starting from now. I think that’s what all these characters are trying to do. They’re trying to do the right thing. They’re trying to turn their life around. But they’re not always as successful as they’d like to be.
AE: Rosie, how did you get involved with the series? Was it decided right from the beginning that you were going to produce as well as act?
Rosie Lourde: No, no, no. I auditioned for Julie for the role of Darcy, and that was right after we’d shot Skin Deep. So I was in the thick of producing Skin Deep at the time. Julie had lost a producer the same week that I auditioned and knew that I was producing Skin Deep and asked me if I’d come on board as a producer. And I told her to kiss off, essentially.
JK: She rejected me.
RL: I just knew how much of my brain space it was going to take up, and I knew how challenging playing Darcy was going to be for me personally. So I chose to focus instead on just the acting. But then as Starting From Now gathered momentum, and we decided to go in for a Season 3, that was also the same time stuff with Skin Deep had settled down a bit. And so I had more time and so I came on board as one of the producers for Season 3, along with Lauren Orrell—she was helping us out then. And then moving forward into Seasons 4 and 5, I really jumped on board in a much more hands-on capacity.
Photos by Tim Thatcher
AE: Did any of those fears you had about juggling acting and producing prove to be true?
RL: Definitely. 100 percent. They’re completely different brains. That’s actually how I think about it. I’m getting better at swapping between the two brains quickly, but Season 3 was a real “jump in the deep end and see if I can swim” situation. Thankfully, there were three of us producing at the time, but there were times when both Lauren and I were acting whilst we were shooting. And obviously Julie was directing, and we lost locations, and we lost actors that we needed for the next morning. And so in between takes and in between setups, we were needing to be on the phone and sorting things out and then jumping straight back into the scene again.
Season 4 was a little bit easier because we did have a more structured team, but, at the same time, the pressures were bigger, and there were much larger dilemmas to deal with.
AE: So both of you work with a lot of talented women. How awesome is that?
JK: It’s incredible. It’s one of the best aspects of making this series. We’ve had that core cast together for two and a half years now, and they’re amazing. I think anyone who’s watched the show knows that the cast is one of the main reasons why people watch it and why people are engaged with the characters and why people are responding to the series, because the performances are incredible. Each of those actors brings so much to the role. In Seasons 4 and 5, we’ve expanded the cast. We’ve got some incredible new actors on board.
RL: And we’ve had some really incredible women behind the scenes as well.
AE: It seems that the Aussie indie scene, whether we’re talking web series or film, is a hotbed for lesbian content these days. What do you attribute that to?
JK: I think the reason why things are changing is the opportunity in terms of the resources, and also because there’s a demand for this sort of content. We decided to make a web series so that we could prove that there was an audience and that there was an audience that really wanted to watch the content that we wanted to make.
RL: I think the other thing is that obviously the LGBT community in Australia is incredibly strong. There’s been lots of representation through the film festivals and through the community for a long time. So there’s always been, especially of late, there’s been an increasingly strong voice within the community and lots of support. But also, Australia’s in a pretty unique position with the film and TV industry in general where there isn’t much diversity. Australia is quite behind in that respect. So people have been frustrated in not seeing themselves reflected back on TV and in films. The combination of the two has made for a breeding ground for people to jump in and make the content themselves.
AE: Your show’s a testament to this. Rosie, you were also a producer on Skin Deep. Then Clementine Mills from Zoe.Misplaced showed up on Starting From Now, and she’ll be back. And now you’ve decided to blow our minds further by bringing in Julia Billington from All About E for Season 4. And those aren’t even all the familiar faces on the show. Are you trying to kill the global audience of lesbian and bisexual women?
JK: That’s our plan. We’ve been pillaging the other lesbian content to steal their actors.
AE: Season 3 was edgier in tone than the previous seasons. What kind of feel does the fourth season bring?
JK: I’d say that the fourth is edgier than the third. It’s been an interesting process because Season 1 was made as a standalone season, without thought that we would go beyond that. So we shot Season 1 to see if we could prove that there was an audience out there that wanted to watch it. So it was written, and I’m not embarrassed to say it, in a slightly more soapy fashion to get people interested and get them invested in the characters. And then after we’d shot that, we realized that there was more to the story that we wanted to tell. So we shot Season 2 before we’d even released Season 1. When we released Season 1, we realized that the audience did want to see it, and we realized that there was certainly more to the story. So when we went to Season 3, we decided to go darker because the characters had basically made some bad choices.
When it came to shooting Seasons 4 and 5—because after we’d shot three we decided to sit down and go, “Okay, how many are we going to make? Let’s plan this out.”—there was a conscious decision to darken the tone even more because we thought that there was no point continuing to do what we’d done before. We thought if we were going to continue, we wanted to step it up a bit. We wanted to, one, improve the production values and everything that comes with that, but we also wanted to tell stories that we felt weren’t being told. Weren’t being told on the web, but also weren’t being told in mainstream media.
AE: It seems like a lot of Darcy’s behavior must be connected to her somewhat mysterious past. Are we going to learn more about that in Season 4?
RL: Yes. You can probably tell from the trailer that we’ve put out that there is more of a story going on with Darcy after she returns and that Season 4 is about finding out what that is and how that impacts everybody else.
AE: Darcy self-sabotages a lot. At the end of Season 3, we see her walk away from Steph to presumably work on herself. So, are she and Steph endgame?
JK: That’s a huge spoiler. We can’t answer that question.
AE: Julie, since you’re the writer, and you’re the one with the power, how about you not answer that question? But Rosie, however, can tell us what she thinks.
RL: Well I think that there’s something really special between Darcy and Steph, and that’s been apparent from the moment that they ran into each other in the first scene of season 1. And that’s been the catalyst for so much change in Darcy’s life. Steph will always be incredibly special to Darcy, but we’ll have to just wait and see whether they end up together or not.
JK: I think it’s interesting how their relationship evolves and the richness of the relationship. And again, it comes back to having worked with the same actors for a long period of time—they’re all such great people. They’ve all become friends over that time, and I think that genuine warmth that they have for each other, you can see it on screen. I think that has also informed that relationship.
AE: On that note, there’s plenty of pairings you can ship on the show, but the ones most people seem to be divided on is whether they ship Steph with Darcy or Emily. Will there be something for everyone this season?
JK: There will be something for everyone this season. Absolutely.
RL: And then something extra that they don’t even know about yet.
AE: I think many of us feel that after Darcy and some drug-fueled hookups, Kristen deserves a genuine shot at love. Any chance of that in Season 4?
JK: There’s a chance for everything. There’s a chance that Kristen will get her act together. There’s some really interesting characters coming into Seasons 4 and 5. You’ll be able to tell from the first episode that there’s someone of interest in Kristen’s life. Whether that pans out or not…
AE: Julie, as a fellow writer I have to ask, how realistic is it that Darcy could nab at least two, and possibly more, incredible women that are willing to work long hours at stressful jobs so that she can stay at home and focus on her writing? Is this an Australian thing?
JK: It’s not prevalent. It is quite unique to Darcy.
AE: The surprising thing is that it’s not that she asks them to. They just do it.
JK: They probably don’t trust her around other people because she’s such a flirt.
RL: No, no. Darcy has the secret down pat. She just wills it to her.
AE: So compared to other seasons, a lot more time went by between Season 3 and Season 4. Why is that?
RL: Web series are not incredibly lucrative money-spinners. We needed to find the right partnerships and the right investors to come on board so that we could fulfill the vision of what seasons 4 and 5 had the potential to be. So we spent all of last year really building that structure.
We’ve been building our community relationships as well as our financial structure over the last year, which has meant it’s taken us a lot longer to get to filming. But the result of all of that work is really going to pay off on screen.
JK: On top of that, we actually filmed two seasons at the same time, so we had a much greater preparation to do. The shoot itself was much more intense. We shot the equivalent of a feature film over 21 days.
AE: How many seasons in total do you plan to do?
JK: We’re not entirely ruling it out, but our plan is that Season 5 will be the last series of the web series. That’s not to say that the story won’t see another evolution in a different format. We’re very keen to move beyond short form content into longer form content. Both feature films and longer form series. So Rosie and I have been working on quite a few ideas in that respect, and that’s primarily where we want to go. But having said that, it doesn’t mean that these characters won’t see the light of day again, and it also means that we will definitely keep working with this audience that we’ve built.
AE: The hype around the web series is justified, considering the strength of the writing and acting, but has anything about it surprised you? Especially the partnerships you’ve managed to arrange.
JK: It’s been incredibly surprising. As I said, we had quite humble beginnings. We’ve been so amazed by the way the audience has embraced the series. But having said that, and thank you for the comment about the writing and acting, it’s also been a lot of hard work. I think one of the things that people don’t realize is that there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Rosie’s been really instrumental in building those relationships. That sort of thing is difficult and takes a lot of time. We’ve been working really hard over the past 12 months to develop that and to make that happen.
RL: I think the bit that you might also be referring to is that people are inspired by the vision that Julie has created. It’s really spoken to a lot of people and really struck a cord, and people are drawn to that.
AE: What’s the secret? What is it about these seasons that are only six episodes each that manage to draw people in?
JK: You need to tell a lot of story in a short period of time. And especially if you’re doing seven-minute episodes, you need to be mindful of each character’s arc across the episodes, across the series as a whole. That there’s, not a manipulated cliffhanger, but a reason for people to come back at the end of each episode.
But I also think people are responding to the fact too that the characters aren’t—that they’re lesbians, but they’re not angsting about their sexuality. Their sexuality isn’t an issue. They’re just complex women who are struggling with life. But we’ve received feedback from the audience responding to the fact that there are lesbians on screen who are just normal people. Basically a bit confused and a bit messed up, but they don’t see their sexuality as a death sentence. And we’ve had some really positive responses from the audience in terms of them feeling less alone. People struggling with their own sexuality have seen it as a breath of fresh air and as a testament to the fact that just because they’re LGBTI, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them. That they are just people. And that was one of the reasons for creating the show in the first place: to have that representation on screen that we don’t have in mainstream media in Australia.
AE: Any final message for your global fan base?
RL: We’re absolutely hoping and praying that we can do a similar premiere event of Season 5 in the States. That would be our absolute dream. So we’re just starting to lay the groundwork for that now.
JK: We want to thank our audience. Especially the people who have been on board since the beginning. It hasn’t been easy. Like there’s been some times over the last couple of years when things have been really tough. Just knowing that the audience is there and is so supportive has made a huge difference.
The only other thing I want to say is that because we’ve had to get these seasons ready for broadcast television, we’ve now seen all of Season 5 as well. So if you think Season 4 is good, wait until Season 5, because I think it’s even better.
Season 4 of Starting From Now will premiere on YouTube on March 1. The entire fourth season is available to rent or buy through Vimeo On Demand. Those in Australia can watch Seasons 4 and 5 in half-hour TV episodes on SBS2 and SBS On Demand on Mondays starting March 7.
