Making waves
From script competition winner to Netflix series creator, Michele Giannusa discusses the long and bumpy road to bringing her first original series, Ripple, to the screen and how it blends multiple stories of people in search of new connections.
With a script called Ripple, Michele Giannusa was shortlisted for the C21 Drama Series Script Competition at industry conference Content London in 2017 – and won. Eight years later, the US screenwriter finally got to see the finished series on screen when it debuted on Netflix.
Set in New York City, the eight-parter explores how seemingly small decisions can bring people together in unexpected ways by following four strangers – Walter (Frankie Faison), Kris (Julia Chan), Nate (Ian Harding) and Aria (Sydney Agudong) – who have unknowingly crossed paths many times but never met.
As they each face life’s challenges – learning to love again, overcoming relationship obstacles, struggling with cancer and fatherhood, and trying to find oneself as a young person in a big city – their actions create a ripple effect that ultimately connects them, delivering a powerful message of hope: the best things often come after the storm, and no one is truly alone.
Just like the numerous interconnected stories that consider the impact of fate and coincidence, Ripple’s debut on Netflix marks the end of a circuitous journey. The show was first developed with the streamer before moving to Hallmark and eventually ending up back with Netflix, where it launched on December 3 last year.
“Even when we changed platforms, there was something telling me, ‘This is not where we’re supposed to be,’” Giannusa tells DQ. “I didn’t want to say this out loud to people, because they’re going to think I’m strange if I say I think we’re going to land back at Netflix. So I just kept it to myself a little bit quietly, and as it started coming out [that Netflix would acquire the finished series], I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me. Is this real?’ Here we are, that complete full circle. It’s the craziest experience I’ve ever had. I don’t know what to compare it to. There’s nothing to compare it to, really.”
Following her Script Competition win, Giannusa had a meeting with Netflix’s then head of original series, Lisa Hamilton, about staffing other shows, in particular Virgin River. And when Hamilton asked her what she was doing with Ripple, it led to Netflix picking up the script and starting development on the project at the end of 2018.
But then the Covid pandemic struck, and Netflix underwent a significant restructure that resulted in Ripple being dropped. Hamilton, who had since moved on to become exec VP of programming at Crown Media Family Networks, then resurrected her interest in the project and brought it to family-orientated cable network Hallmark, which was embarking on a new strategy for its new streaming service Hallmark+.
“I was like, ‘I don’t think this is a fit for Hallmark.’ I was so unbelievably resistant,” Giannusa remembers. “Certainly at the time we were developing it, the tone [of Ripple] was a little darker, so I just didn’t see a world where that could happen [at Hallmark]. But the promise was that Hallmark was doing these amazing things and shifting into what they consider edgier material. They had this whole plan. Lisa was a huge spearhead for that plan, and then we got greenlit there.”
Ripple subsequently completed production and was being finished in post when Hallmark shifted strategy and decided that instead of airing exclusive content as originally announced, Hallmark+ was returning to its ‘legacy brand’ as the home of the linear channel’s original movies. A couple of months later, Giannusa received the news that Ripple was being pulled from the service.
“It was difficult on one level, because I had restructured the whole show to fit the platform,” she says. “At the same time, there was an opportunity to see where we could land. My insides were screaming ‘Netflix’ the whole time. I kept feeling that. Then when we got that news, I can’t explain it, because I always knew if we had the opportunity to be on Netflix, our people would find us. I knew it. I knew that platform would be the one.”
Weeks after the show’s launch – it landed in the streamer’s top 10 in eight countries – Giannusa is still receiving messages from people around the world, including one currently undergoing chemotherapy who shared details of their own cancer journey, and another who has found comfort in the show as they go through their own divorce. Ripple’s portrayal of people stuck in moments of grief, and overcoming the challenges of moving on, has offered comfort to the many people who can relate to the characters’ predicaments.
“At the end, the core message underneath all these different situations is understanding that you can find your people and not be alone,” Giannusa says. “I just want to shine a light on that, because I know it was true for me as I was developing the show.
“When I moved out to LA, I didn’t know one person here, and having to rebuild a community and find people, especially when you are in the throes of grief, is really challenging, because it’s not necessarily something you want to do. What we wanted to show in this is that you don’t have to do this alone.”
Even between Ripple’s movements from Netflix to Hallmark and back, the project “died and was resurrected about six times,” and the writer contemplated moving on to other works in progress. “I know it sounds very strange,” she says, “but it is almost like having someone you love on life support, and you’re like, ‘Wait, hold on. Wait, are they opening their eyes? I’m not sure. I think they are.’ You’re not trying to pull the plug, but you’re also like, ‘I still love this person but also I don’t want them to suffer.’ So I went through these stages of like, ‘What am I doing?’”
But every time she faced up to grieving a series that could never quite get over the line, something would happen to pull her back in. In the spirit of the show, Giannusa and Ripple were meant to be.
“Many times I did think we were not going to make it, but I wanted to ride the wave,” she says. “I’ve always tried to be a little bit open and not wallow so much when getting the rejections, and there are a lot of rejections, constantly, so you just sort of say, ‘OK, keep yourself open just a little bit.’ It doesn’t need to be Pollyanna-style, but there does need to be some little tinge of hope.”
Despite Giannusa veering between hope and rejection, the core message behind Ripple stayed the same, though its tone did change numerous times. The writer says the original pilot and season arc was actually “quite dark,” with Aria’s life hanging in the balance at the end of the first script.
“I was going to go to a lot of different places that we weren’t able to because of the platform we were on,” she says. But now the show is on air, she doesn’t feel as though Ripple is markedly different from its original incarnation.
One thing she hadn’t considered, however, was how families would come together to watch the series – something she says wouldn’t have been likely with its original concept. In particular, Kris’s storyline saw her have “fun” with a series of men after putting up a “barrier” to relationships.
That storyline is “just done in a different way now,” she says. “There were definitely things we couldn’t do [on Hallmark] and you make sacrifices for but, at the same time, we have this really sweet show now that can be on and people don’t need to worry about language or anything like that.”
While the series that was originally produced for Hallmark might be different from the one that was originally developed with Netflix in mind, Giannusa can’t now imagine anyone other than Faison, Chan, Harding and Agudong in the lead roles.
“I can’t explain my love for these people and their love for each other,” she says. “Had I got to make it back in the day, it wouldn’t have been them, and I can’t imagine now these not being my four people. I can’t see anyone else doing this.
“What we had on set was so unbelievably special, for both crew and cast and everyone else. When I think about what we have now, yes, it is lighter, and certainly was made for Hallmark, but even though it was made for Hallmark, there is a reason we are not on it. I just think we wouldn’t have fit.”
Behind the scenes, Giannusa partnered with showrunner Joni Lefkowitz (New Girl, Jane the Virgin) to make the series, which is produced by Lionsgate Television. They worked together online during Covid, with three scripts and a series bible completed when Hallmark gave the greenlight. Three other writers then joined a writers room to complete the scripts, with Giannusa and Lefkowitz subsequently departing for Toronto, where the series was shot.
Describing production as “quite an experience,” Giannusa says she went to set every single day full of butterflies and looking ahead to the prospect of rewrites, meetings and location scouts. Though she wasn’t officially the showrunner, “I was a part of all of it, which I just love so much,” she says. “As exhausted as you are being part of every single part of the show, it’s the best thing to be able to know you’re part of it all the way through post. From soup to nuts, it was incredible.”
Marking her first major series, Giannusa says the biggest shift she faced was from writing on her own to having a huge team to work with. But she has learned the importance of letting go of a project that had been with her for so long and leaning on those around her.
“The biggest lesson is being able to know that, as long as you have a strong team behind you, trust them to do their jobs and they will, especially if they love the show this much,” she says. “Being able to let go of some of that is the key when you create something that is such an original, personal piece. There is just so much love attached to this for me, but I trust my team and I know they want to make it just as great.”
Giannusa is now working on a “high-concept” project tentatively titled Alter, which taps into her fascination with alter-egos.
“We’re going to see where it goes. I’m really excited about it right now, though, because tonally it’s different to what Ripple is,” she adds. “Hopefully there are a few more swings I can take there.”
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tagged in: Lionsgate Television, Michele Giannusa, Netflix, Ripple