Shrill AF With Lindy West

By Greta Johnsen
Lindy West
Lindy West is the executive producer of 'Shrill,' a Hulu series based on West's novel of the same name. Jenny Jimenez / Images courtesy of Lindy West/Hulu
Lindy West
Lindy West is the executive producer of 'Shrill,' a Hulu series based on West's novel of the same name. Jenny Jimenez / Images courtesy of Lindy West/Hulu

Shrill AF With Lindy West

By Greta Johnsen
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Lindy West says she’s all too familiar with the TV trope of an overweight character spending screen time resisting slices of pizza. 

“Usually what we get are weight loss narratives and makeover narratives. And these sort of sad sack stories about either people trying to lose weight and succeeding or trying to lose weight and failing and being sad,” West said on Nerdette.

With Shrill, a new streaming series on Hulu that’s loosely based on West’s 2016 memoir of the same name, she wanted to subvert that narrative.

“The whole idea is that there are other ways to live and that you deserve a life that is bigger than that — and that has a scope beyond your body and what it weighs,” West said.

West talked with Nerdette host Greta Johnsen about creating Shrill, leaving Twitter and writing her new book (a follow-up to this New York Times editorial) which is due out this fall.