Karen Ballard/Netflix
Karen Ballard/Netflix
Fill 1
Fill 1
June 29, 2017
In The Mix

She’s the Boss

One woman’s rise to the top spurs another to tell her story.

Lisa Rosen

Kay Cannon wanted to create a show about a flawed, complicated heroine whose life story wasn’t centered on romance.

So the comedy writer asked her agents to send her any material they thought she might like — “because I lack any kind of imagination,” she quips. “My best work is when it’s based on something real.”

When they sent her Sophia Amoruso’s memoir, #GIRLBOSS, all it took was a look at the synopsis.

“I remember going, ‘I’m doing this.’ Here’s this young woman who on paper had no discernible skills or talents — a college dropout, a shoplifter, an honest-to-a-fault asshole millennial,” who went on to create the online vintage fashion empire Nasty Gal and become a multimillionaire, doing everything her own prickly way. “

Cannon — a writer-producer on 30 Rock and New Girl and writer of all three Pitch Perfect films — was soon on board as creator of Girlboss, executive producing with Charlize Theron and Amoruso. Britt Robertson stars on the Netflix series as the nasty gal in question.

“The first week of shooting, both Charlize and Sophia were there,” Cannon recalls. “It was so great. We had a bunch of powerful women in video village.”

Long before that, Cannon and her writers had quizzed Amoruso relentlessly about her life, work and relationships. “We asked her to relive the last 10 years of her life,” she says.

Then they discarded much of it. “The world around her — her friends, love interest, even the relationship with her parents — is all made up. But we hit these monumental moments that happened in her actual career, and we stay true to that.”

Cannon’s own career has been pretty monumental. She started out performing comedy before becoming a writer on 30 Rock, which she calls “a master class” in comedy writing. Pitch Perfect was a massive hit; she was  quickly hired to write Pitch Perfect 2 ( Pitch Perfect 3 is due out in December).

She’s about to direct her first film, currently titled The Pact. But becoming  a showrunner has been her biggest dream come true. “People ask, ‘What’s been your Girlboss moment?’ It’s to run my own show.”

Working for show creators like Tina Fey on 30 Rock, Liz Meriwether on New Girl and Cristela Alonzo on Cristela has been inspiring. “I’ve never worked  on a show that hasn’t been created by a woman. That’s so rare.  Girlboss is about taking ownership of your own life — and I got to learn it from them.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 6, 2017

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