'Rise of the Pink Ladies': How new blood, original songs revive the 1950s 'Grease' girl gang

If “Grease” is the word, then pink is the color – of the coolest girls in school.

Taking after movie musical icons Michelle Pfeiffer and Stockard Channing, a new gang of young actresses don those signature jackets in the Paramount+ prequel series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” (first two episodes stream Thursday, then weekly) and they’re just the right fit. Well, mostly.

Ari Notartomaso “wept” after putting on one of them. Cheyenne Isabel Wells also found it emotional. Marisa Davila calls it a "magical" moment. And even some last-minute alterations before cameras rolled didn't keep Tricia Fukuhara from realizing the significance of wearing that jacket.

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“It symbolizes so much,” Fukuhara says. “The friendship and confidence and all of these things that I aspire to be – standing up for others, embracing who you are and filling these shoes when your feet are size 5, so you can't fit into any shoes.”

Full of musical numbers and timely themes, “Pink Ladies” revisits Rydell High four years before John Travolta’s Danny and Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy were hopelessly devoted to each other in 1978’s “Grease.” Jane Facciano (Davila) begins the 1954-55 school year with big student council plans and a new boyfriend, until her "good girl" reputation is tarnished by fellow classmates.

Rather than slink into the background, Jane stands up for those who feel different and unpopular. “She wants so much out of life, and has all of these hopes and dreams and wants to accomplish everything. I saw myself on the page for the first time,” Davila says.

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Jane’s joined by three like-minded girls including Cynthia Zdunowski (Notartomaso), who yearns to be a member of the male T-Birds gang. Cynthia “has a great sense of humor and she's very bold" and, like Notartomaso (who uses they/them pronouns), is nonbinary. “We get to look at the reality of queerness in the 1950s in a bunch of different ways,” they say.

Olivia Valdovinos (Wells) is a talented writer who weathers gossip over what happened between her and a Rydell teacher. “She'll build this wall in front of her that she doesn't like a lot of people to come through,” Wells says.

And Nancy Nakagawa (Fukuhara) is a fledgling fashion designer spurned by her only friends – until she finds a new crew and crafts the signature item of the girl gang that takes the school by storm. “I brought a dark snarky humor and comedy and a little bit of an awkwardness,” Fukuhara says. “And I was an outcast in high school, so there's all of that, too.”

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“Pink Ladies” creator and writer Annabel Oakes, who’s loved “Grease” since she was 10, found a successful recipe for her main characters. She’d take bits and pieces from stories of people she talked with who went to school in the '50s, threw in some of her own and added a dash of “Grease.”

Nancy, for example, was a melding of one of those authentic tales with the career-woman vibe of Frenchy – a Pink Ladies member from the original film – and “the beautiful, unapologetic, creative ambitious part of myself that I wanted to lean more into when I was a teenager,” Oakes says.

Alethea Jones, executive producer and director of three episodes, created the look of “Pink Ladies” by "reaching back to Technicolor musicals from the 1950s to ’70s,” she says, and embracing “a handmade feel.” (The Pink Ladies’ names are stitched by hand onto their jackets.) And the project went all in on musical numbers, with 30 original songs written for the 10-episode first season.

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The old standby “Grease Is the Word” is used as a “vehicle” to reintroduce the throwback Rydell world, “and we take the reins from there,” Davila says. There are character-driven tracks – “I Want More” is Jane's "I want" Broadway-style showstopper, while “I’m in Love" is Wells' Olivia “trying to just figure out what is happening within her brain,” the actress says.

But others touch on issues like gender roles and racial inequality: One that Notartomaso describes as “a way into our show's main themes” was “In the Club,” a hauntingly jazzy song about wealth, prejudice and white privilege at an athletic club set to host a school dance that doesn't allow people of color. "We're pushing those buttons, and it's time to tell those stories," Fukuhara adds.

While there are “a lot of cinematic universes that I feel like weren't built for me,” Oakes says, “Grease” spoke to her in a profound way. But she looked to one of her husband’s favorites, “Star Wars,” when it came to "Grease" fan service and including connections to the film.

For her, “Grease” isn’t just the word; it’s the mothership. “We pay homage to the mothership, and then when we do departures from it, they're very intentional.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies: New actresses, songs power prequel