Laura Chinn: Florida Girl
Photo: Kevin Scanlon
Pop TV’s comedy series Florida Girls follows four young women as they navigate the ups and downs of life in small-town Florida, confronting poverty, tricky situations and modern families. Creator and star Laura Chinn spoke to ALHAUS about tackling women’s issues through the show in a realistic way.
I started thinking about writing Florida Girls a couple of years ago, while I was writing on other shows. It became a goal of mine to create the show, and many people helped me get there along the way.
Making it was sort of a long process—it wasn't an overnight thing. Having a background in acting helped so that I could be in the show, and all my writing experience meant they let me run and write the show. So all my previous experiences came together for this to get made. Having my own show is 100% a dream come true for me. Since I first watched 30 Rock about ten years ago, this has been my dream.
(L-R) Laci Mosely as 'Jayla,' Laura Chinn as 'Shelby,' Patty Guggenheim as 'Erica,' and Melanie Field as 'Kaitlin' in Pop TV’s Florida Girls.
We deal with a lot of female-centred issues in the show, like what women typically deal with in poverty situations. And we talk about sexual harassment in the workplace, and also race as a theme. I'm mixed race, another character is black and the other two girls are white. I feel like we don't show black and white female friendships much on TV and in movies; it's kind of a rarity. So I really wanted to depict a realistic black and white female friendship.
The characters don’t have a support system or an education. They’re smart, but they just don’t have any information. And then how do you rise above your station? I wanted to show what people in those situations are dealing with, and I wanted to do it with humour because I think it's more palatable that way. You don't have to walk away from the story feeling like ‘oh, it's all hopeless and being poor in such a tragic existence’, but I wanted to show a poverty situation in a light-hearted way—so you can actually watch it, take it in and learn something.