Making the band
Paper Dolls producers Jessica Carrera and Mark Fennessy reflect on making this eight-part series that follows five singers through Australia’s music industry, charting their emotional highs and dangerous lows as they are catapulted to fame after winning a reality competition. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, aspiring singers found overnight fame when they were plucked from obscurity to star in reality singing competition Popstars. Chosen through a series of televised auditions, the winning contestants were brought together as bands that would go on to experience chart success and international stardom. However, the good times rarely lasted more than a few years after these groups were thrust into the spotlight. In Australia, girl group Bardot was formed by the five winners of the country’s first season of Popstars in 1999, and the story of one member, Belinda Chapple, is the inspiration behind a new eight-part drama that dives into the country’s music industry at the turn of the millennium. Paper Dolls isn’t a biopic, however, and draws from stories and experiences across the music industry to chart the extreme highs and devastating lows facing the five members of fictional band Harlow, formed via a music reality show called Pop Rush. When industry outcast and former pop star Izzy James (Emalia) is offered the opportunity to join Harlow the day before their live debut, she jumps at the rare second chance she has been given, much to the chagrin of her new bandmates – free-spirit Annabel (Naomi Sequeira), rebellious rocker Jade … Continue reading Making the band
