The Millennial disaster comedy turning high school reunions into hell on Earth

As far as surrealist scene-setting goes, entering the set of a flood-apocalypse disaster comedy in the worst rain Sydney has endured in years is top-notch commitment. My shoes are soaked by the time I get to the University of Sydney Lidcombe campus building, where filming for Class of ’07 – an eight-part survival comedy orbiting around a high-school reunion – is wrapping up. Inside, the all-female cast are taking a break: bouncing basketballs, shooting baskets and intermittently pausing to stare up at the tin roof, which is really beginning to try the nerves of the mic operators.

Kacie Anning – the creative powerhouse behind the new Amazon Original, having conceived, written, directed and produced the series – and executive producer Mimi Butler say this is just the nature of the beast; they’ve become very familiar with wild weather during the three-month filming period. But given the series was filmed over one of the wettest summers in recent history, following months of disruptions due to COVID-19 restrictions, their disaster comedy has been remarkably timely.

Megan Smart, Emily Browning and Caitlin Stasey star in Kacie Anning’s eight-part comedy Class of ’07.Credit: John Platt

“We would sit around the [writers’] room and talk about an apocalypse and how we’d all respond,” says Butler. “[During production] the world has been hit by several pretty big things. We kinda all now know for a fact how we react and how we cope with isolation and how we survive.”

Class of ’07’s premise relies on an apocalyptic flood pushing the group together, and to their breaking point – but it’s less absurd when it’s actually happening.

“The show is probably more about the Millennial outlook on climate change; we’ve grown up with this looming spectre of devastation over our heads and watched generations before us do nothing,” Anning says. “Whether or not we should be making it funny or not, I’m not sure. It was definitely ironic to be making a show set in a flooded world in the midst of just insane and unprecedented flooding down most of the east coast of Australia. That’s the world we’re in, unfortunately.”

It’s life imitating art, in many ways. The show follows women who come together for their high-school reunion and get trapped on an island, unpacking female friendships, the scars of youth, and growing pains while navigating an apocalyptic catastrophe. For a show interrogating the way they interact under extreme (and mundane) circumstances, it couldn’t be a better fit for the cast, who were forced to COVID-safely isolate – and live – with each other.

“We had to put everyone into a bubble to keep going,” says Butler. “They’ve literally done what’s been in the show… To all reports, the friendships are holding up really well and there haven’t been any problems.”

“My goal has always been to create a love letter to female friendship and in particular those really formative friendships you make in your teenage years,” says Class of ’07 creator Kacie Anning.Credit: John Platt

That cast contains some of Australia’s brightest young actors, many with extensive theatre credits. Emily Browning (American Gods, The Affair), Caitlin Stasey (Please Like Me, Neighbours), Megan Smart (Wakefield, Home and Away), Chi Nguyen (Fisk), Claire Lovering (The Letdown, Wonderland) and others star alongside Debra Lawrance (Home and Away, Please Like Me). Butler went to great lengths to create a suite of characters with independent storylines and creative arcs, and to ensure interactions could whiplash from comedy to drama.

“The comedy stuff is incredibly nerve-wracking . This is the first time I’ve done comedy and I feel vulnerable in a way that I never really have before,” says Browning. “It’s a very unique tone [in the show].”

Stasey nods. “It’s easy to make someone feel something, but it’s really hard to make people laugh,” she says. “I’m in the same boat that Emily was expressing. I feel very naked when you try something and nobody laughs, and you’re like, ‘shit’.”

Browning says: “But a lot of this for me has been about allowing myself to embarrass myself. Which was really scary. When we first got here, we played drama and improv games … my fear response kicked in. I just wanted to run away … But I trust Kacie. I’m just trusting that if I go too far in the dickhead direction, she’ll pull me back. I hope so. We’ll see.”

It’s in that sweet-spot that Anning lives, allowing the actors to show up and experiment and play with characters who could very well be experiencing similar journeys to the actors playing them. She wanted to create something that “had really big stakes and a big premise and a big world” – and she applies that as much to the climate disaster as she does to the experience of young womanhood.

“My goal has always been to create a love letter to female friendship and in particular those really formative friendships you make in your teenage years that leave deep marks on who we are, and are about being known by another person before you’ve figured out how to put on all the armour of adulthood, and how naked you feel when you stand in front of those people, you know, ten years later,” says Anning. “When you speak to women about that especially, it’s a really big part of our lives: the friendships you have in your youth. They’re indelible and they form who you are.” She describes them as “the greatest love stories of your lifetime”.

Anning’s deft script digs into questions of the female experience, of friendships, of the male gaze in a world where there are no men.

Class of ’07’s premise relies on an apocalyptic flood pushing the group together, and to their breaking point.Credit: John Platt

“Do you keep shaving your legs if there’s no one there to gaze upon them?” she asks. “We’re really trying to deconstruct what I call ‘pop-culture feminism’, which is sort of like the ‘yeah, go girl’ sentiment and the Instagram-ification of feminism, and whether that’s relevant in a world where there’s no men, or whether it’s relevant in a world that is over. What happens to the wage gap in survival?”

Anning pauses. “We don’t answer them by any standard, but we ask questions and hopefully make it funny along the way.”

So, naturally, an apocalypse?

“We’ve always described our apocalypse as a uniquely female apocalypse in that it’s passive aggressive,” says Anning. “In the past, the domain of the disaster movie was so masculine. It’s always some huge violent tidal wave … What we’re seeing from climate change in real life is that it’s a slow creep; it rains for days on end and then lives are ruined.”

Class of ’07 is an Australian investment by Amazon Prime, produced by Matchbox Studios and Amazon in association with Screen NSW, which will spread the uniquely Australian sense of humour – and extremely relatable pains of growing up – to more than 240 countries and territories.

“It is Australian and it isn’t, and I think that’s what you hope for – that you don’t have to lose the specificity of our sense of humour but that you can also feel confident that audiences are intelligent and open-minded enough now that they’ll watch anything from anywhere,” she says. “The Australian-ness of it is absolutely baked into the tone of the show but … it’s also very much designed to be an international product.”

The weather doesn’t ease up. The cast shoot their last baskets before getting mic’d up again and sitting back in scene. Anning pulls her headset over her ear. The world’s changing and the floods are raging – and she’s got a love letter to send.

Class of ’07 is on Amazon Prime from March 17.

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