We all need a babysitter right now — a real one because, duh, pandemic parenting. But also, we all truly need the new Netflix adaptation ofThe Baby-Sitters Club。It’s a socially conscious, well-acted, and flawlessly crafted series, one that will bring you the joyful thrill of nostalgia if you grew up on Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and Dawn, in all their iterations. And, for the uninitiated, the show also provides a captivating introduction to the young teen babysitters from the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.
雷切尔·舒克特，40岁，是这个新的适应背后的令人难以置信的完成犹太showrunner。这不是她第一次打Netflix的：她也是在一个奇妙的作家和制片人辉光。她书面超女并且也是五本书的作者。但是，当我跟她打个电话，她的声音就像任何忙momin need of the Baby-Sitters Club’s services:她支撑着她3岁的儿子，西奥得宝块;嘘她兴奋的狗;并回答有关在奥马哈长大的犹太问题 - “一个不寻常的起源故事，”她说。
正是在那里，在内布拉斯加州，那Shukert得到了她的安妮·M.·马丁的传奇书首次尝试。“我得到了[它]作为生日礼物，”她说。“而这是第九号，The Ghost at Dawn’s House，这一定是一样，1989年”小说几乎去的许多优书籍的方式 - 未读，在书架上收集灰尘。
“It didn’t really seem that interesting,” Shukert admits. “But I was one day I had nothing to read and, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll read this book.’ And I got completely hooked.”
At the same time, it seemed that大家在她的小型私人所犹太学校，犹太教弗里德尔学院，也引起了热潮：“突然，像这种整个宇宙The Baby-Sitters Club我们都非常喜欢用深深沉浸，”她说。
Shukert’s favorite character was Claudia, who was, at the series’ outset, the only non-white member ofThe Baby-Sitters Club。“我是唯一的犹太人民在我居住的一个，” Shukert说。“虽然我们是不同的种族，我结束了有一种无形的差别的这种感觉。”
快进到2017年Shukert是产后3个月，住在洛杉矶。她的背部在工作中，该组辉光,当她走近这个新BSC适应。“我完全被这个产后精神病，我在那里工作，但还没有睡，也没有睡个月，刚好想起我自己的名字，”她说。“我当时想完全熄灭了，但我记得所有这些细节与The Baby-Sitters Club“。
And so, for the first time in her career, Shukert became a showrunner. Being a mom, she says, helped enable her able to spearhead such an ambitious project: “There are a lot of plates to keep in the air and it’s very much like being a parent,” she says. “In that way you’re like, OK: Here are the 70 things that need to get done today. Which one do I absolutely have to do first? Which one can wait an hour or two hours? Which ones can I do at the same time? The way that your brain reorganizes itself when you have a kid really lends itself to being a showrunner.”
生儿育女还提供Shukert上的一个新的视角BSC图书。“I started to think about it in this sort of multi-generational way, which I had not thought about as a kid — you know, the parents are just these kinds of ciphers to you, and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s Kristy’s mom,’ whatever, you don’t even know her name,” she says.
在一个特定的场景，Alicia Silverstone，谁扮演克里斯蒂的母亲（她的名字叫伊丽莎白，顺便）正在寻找托儿无处不在 - 在网上，在手机上，也没有人可用，还是值得信赖的，或者不是后面的付费专区。它是这样的听上去很像moment for any parent.
But it’s not just the parents in the show that Shukert and her writing team get right — she nails the teen characters, too. One of the truly outstanding achievements of this show is how natural the girls’ dialogue feels. Shukert says she took a lot of inspiration from the five actresses who played the main characters: Sophie Grace (Kristy), Momona Tamada (Claudia), Shay Rudolph (Stacey), Malia Baker (Mary Anne), and Xochitil Gomez (Dawn). “There’s a lot more latitude to this than I think people sometimes realize,” she says. “They’re all really smart and articulate, but they also are girls, and they have big feelings, and they’re silly. Finding that balance was the trick.”
Shukert的适应对待马丁的书带着一种崇敬。虽然电视节目绝对是突破性的和现代 - 特色queerparents,transkids, and a diverse main cast — it is all those things very much in the spirit of the original books, which were also were ahead of their time when it came to representation.
Shukert说，她并没有意识到，她最喜欢的角色成长过程中，克劳迪娅，是这样的指导原则亚裔美国人女孩。“不仅是她亚裔美国人，她也很不是一成不变的，”她说。“她是很有艺术性。她不擅长数学。她不是那种，当有在所有亚洲的孩子，这是他们是谁的性格“。
As a showrunner, Shukert found she connected most with Claudia’s character, too. “The episode where Claudia’s grandmother has a stroke, and then she relives her memories of being in an internment camp, was incredibly personal to me,” Shukert says. “Although my grandfather was not in an internment camp, he was a refugee from Poland. I remember when I was a little kid, and he was starting to struggle with dAementia, we would go visit him in the nursing home, and he would sometimes be trapped in these like horrible memories from his childhood, weeping and afraid… It was very scary for me as a little kid, and I remember it really intensely, and I remember how it felt, so that story really came from that. Even though it’s a different circumstance, the feeling behind it’s the same.”
代表这些小但情感共振时刻是在本次车展的中心。在一个故事情节玛丽·安妮照看名为贝利一个年轻的反式女孩谁爱打公主 - 而故事情节是一个机会来描绘好allyship，并站起来为他人，表现出玛丽安妮呼喊着misgendering贝利时，她得到了医生和护士的重要性病 - 这个故事是最终反孩子一个美丽的，独特的，完全充实出写照。“像，也有反式的孩子，他们的存在，” Shukert说。“他们还只是孩子，谁喜欢玩，有时生病，需要保姆。我觉得这是很容易把人变成社会问题时，他们真的只是人。”
These days, so much of YA programming involves big drama or supernatural fights against evil — but what stood out to Shukert is that for theBSC成员，英雄主义是更小的东西，而且很连接到我们生活的时代。“这些女孩都一样，“我要成为一个真正的好保姆这个孩子谁发烧'，”她说。“我觉得，在这个时刻，我们没有人能真正解决[这一流行病]，但我们都可以做的这个小东西，就像住在我们家，像戴了面具一样，不把其他人处于危险之中。对我来说，感觉就像一个非常积极的信息，即使它不觉得你让一个巨大的差异 - 你正在做一个小东西的巨大差异“。
在紧张的时间in which our kids feel particularly powerless,BSCprovides girls, in particular, the opportunity to see their potential to be powerful and impactful. “There are not a lot of instances, in real life or fiction, where you see young girls being treated seriously,” she says. “I feel like you see a lot of tween girls, and they scream and are silly, and they’re sort of over the top and hormonal.”
“这些女孩都是那些东西，”她接着说。“他们的乐趣。他们有迷恋，他们纷纷议论，他们喜欢的衣服......但他们也有正义的真正意义上的，和责任的真正意义，并希望回馈的现实意义。这是一个非常积极的事情感到加强和现在的模型“。
Image via by Andrew Toth/WireImage/Netflix
