The surprising ABC high school comedy series taking inspiration from Chris Lilley
The parallel lives of Nina Oyama and Urvi Majumdar were perhaps always set to converge. Both preferred comedy over study, and fell short of academic expectations at their select-entry state schools – Oyama at North Sydney Girls High School and Majumdar at The Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School in Melbourne.
They share an appreciation for US high-school cringe comedies PEN15, Freaks and Geeks and Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever. So when they were invited to work together on Majumdar’s autobiographical web series, Urvi Went To An All Girls School, chosen for the ABC’s Fresh Blood Pilots program, it was as if fate had intervened.
Urvi Went To An All Girls School creator Urvi Majumdar (right) in a scene from the show, which screens as part of the ABC’s Fresh Blood series.
“I’m into star signs,” says Majumdar, during a break at her day job, relief-teaching at a primary school. “Nina’s got a triple Fire – her Sun, Moon and Rising are all Fire signs. And I’m all Earth. So we’re a good team … She’s been an amazing mentor.”
Oyama, who appears in Utopia and Deadloch, co-wrote and directed the three-part series, which is set in 2010, around the time both women were in senior school, and follows year 11 student, Urvi, a misfit at the fictional Grogan Girls High. Urvi dreams of dating Hot Ryan (Josh Burton), from Grogan Boys, and becoming an actress. She faces pressure from her parents and overachieving younger sister (Isha Desai).
“Urvi is an exciting new voice,” says Oyama. “She’s self-deprecating and honest. She’s an absolute treasure, and I can’t wait for the world to see what she can do.”
Oyama drew inspiration from Chris Lilley’s 2013 miniseries Ja’mie: Private School Girl, “the original Australian girls’ school text, for me”.
Nina Oyama and Urvi Majumdar worked together on the Fresh Blood series Urvi Went To An All Girls School.
“I think we should shout out the Aussies that have come before us … [Ja’mie’s] entitlement of being a teenager is very relatable – that sense of being so angry at the world, but you’re also just taking and taking, and you can’t see how lucky you are.”
Despite the soaring average IQ of Grogan Girls, cliques still rule the schoolyard. Except in this case, the hot mean girls club is mixed race by design. And it’s Janet the Skip (Jordan Barr), who is the outcast. “It’s hard when you go to a school where the white kids are the minority, and then you go out into the world and go on the train and immediately get bullied for being Asian,” says Oyama.
The series brought back painful memories for Oyama, who left school before year 12. “I had trouble separating how well I was doing in exams from how I should feel as a person,” she says. “I was depressed for my entire school experience. I was barely functioning and very mentally ill.”
Of her time at Mac.Robertson, Majumdar says: “It was like a public girls school trying to give off the private vibe, but it was cutthroat competition. The friendships got closer there because you were trying to survive. But you’re getting pressure from home. You’re getting pressure from the school. It was bitchy about intelligence rather than looks.”
Produced by Michelle Buxton and Lauren Nichols, with a female-led crew that includes Heartbreak High’s director of photography Kate Cornish, and comedians Sashi Perera, Suren Jayemanne and Rohan Ganju in the writers’ room, the series is the first of two to air in the pilot program, ahead of western Sydney comedy Westerners by Munasib Hamid and Kevin Duo Han, premiering the same night.
Majumdar hopes a taste of Urvi Went to An All Girls School has viewers hungry for more honest and cathartic high-school storytelling.
“I love Heartbreak High, but I feel like they’re way cooler than the characters we have,” says Majumdar. “We wanted to laugh at all the things that we used to do, like the bracelets and MSN Messenger. If you grew up in that time, it’s nostalgic ... And there’s something great about being able to respect that you made it through.”
Urvi Went To An All Girls School premieres on Wednesday, April 9, at 9pm, on the ABC.
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