Series like Sorry For Your Loss, Russian Doll, Sharp Objects and The Handmaid’s Tale delve deep into the mental state of its female characters.
The relationship between women and mental health is often exploited on television as well as amped up for drama (Homeland). However, in recent times, there are some TV shows that highlight mental health and the role it plays in a woman’s world with complexity.
With so many television outlets competing for attention among myriad awards entries every year, notes Variety, deeper and darker explorations of female characters and their psyches are becoming more common in storytelling.
According to Kit Steinkellner, creator of Sorry for Your Loss, which premiered on Facebook Watch last year, “I’ll watch an episode of Friends on Netflix and if I’m at a low-point, it will make me feel so alone to watch a problem get resolved in 22 minutes.”
The playwright and screenwriter further went on to say that she loves comedy and a grand, sweeping romance. “There have been moments in my life where I have been really grateful for them. But there are moments when nothing can make me feel more alone than pure escapism. As an artist you should know that if you feel something that strongly, that there are other people out there feeling the same thing. It’s been gratifying to know that our show has helped other people feel less alone,” asserts Steinkellner.
Speaking about Sorry for Your Loss, which revolves around a young widow adjusting to life following her husband’s death, Steinkellner reveals that before she sold her series to Facebook Watch, she faced an uphill battle because of the show’s perceived depressing nature. “I found people really responded to the art of it all, but then didn’t know what to do with the script commercially,” she adds. “They didn’t know how a story about death and grief and loss as the centerpiece of the story was going to look or function. Then the landscape changed. Shows like This Is Us were certainly helpful in terms of diving into grief and pain and loss.”
Now in its fourth season This Is Us dives more deeply into female mental health with Tess (essayed by Eris Baker) struggling with anxiety. And this is just one example of how complex stories of women and the exploration of their mental health affects them is rapidly becoming the norm.
While the mental decline of characters including Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) in Game of Thrones as well as Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) coming to terms with her husband’s death on Dead to Me have also become rich story areas, The Handmaid’s Tale is another series that delves into the mental state of its female characters.
“According to Russian Doll showrunner Leslye Headland, one of the interpretations of the Netflix series at a granular level is the exploration of a woman wanting to break her obsessive compulsive need to repeat patterns in order to escape the “Groundhog Day” world in which she’s stuck. She, along with co-creators Amy Poehler and Natasha Lyonne, who also stars, were interested in showing a protagonist who wasn’t necessarily interested in romance, motherhood, or other traditional storytelling venues, which Headland says could be perceived as “crazy” in and of itself,” reports Variety.
“There is this quick feeling that if a woman has a complicated feeling, then she must be mean, or crazy. And that’s just another way of dismissing her taking up space in the world,” shares Leslye Headland, adding that one of her favorite scenes in Russian Doll is when Nadia was screaming, ‘I’m not crazy; you know I hate it when people say I’m crazy.’
Headland furthers, “There is just this really harsh feeling that, at the end of the day, no matter how righteous you might feel about how angry you are, or how sad you are, or how depressed you are, there’s somebody from somewhere – and maybe even someone that’s close to you – who is going to dismiss you with that word.”
There is an equal balance to strike when it comes to showcasing real disorders in dramatic fashion, such as BBC America’s breakout hit Killing Eve, which has already bagged multiple awards in its first two seasons (including a lead drama actress Emmy win for Jodie Comer and a 2018 Golden Globe win for Sandra Oh).
Emerald Fennell, who is the executive producer of Killing Eve season 2 says, “The crazy woman trope is still pervasive and we see it all the time, but it’s such a delicate balance because if you swing too far the other way you’re not able to write honestly.”
–With information from Variety
