Rydell High is back in a first look at Grease prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
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The idea of a Grease prequel gives us chills, they're multiplying. So, it's a good thing that new prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies promises to be electrifying.
EW has an exclusive first look at the series, which was created by Annabel Oakes and returns audiences to Rydell High — this time in 1954 when the girl gang known as the Pink Ladies is first being formed. But just because it's a prequel doesn't mean they'll forget what came before.
"Fans of the original should be happy," says Oakes. "We call Grease the mothership and we always are talking about how we have to pay homage and respect the mothership."
The original Grease, itself based on a stage musical of the same name, starred Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, as girl-next-door Sandy and greaser Danny, who must contend with the challenges of high school and the judgment of their friends as they try to find a way to make their relationship work.
Oakes, who was most recently a writer on Minx, grew up a huge fan of Grease and Grease 2. "My first dance performance ever was to 'Grease Lightning,' which I performed in several local malls and parking lots," she quips.
Because of her devotion to the original film (and many Halloweens spent in poodle skirts), Oakes was initially skeptical about creating a prequel to Grease for television. "I thought, 'Nobody needs a new Grease,'" she says of her reaction when Paramount first approached her. "The original Grease is absolutely perfect. But then, I thought about it for a second and I thought, 'What unanswered questions do I have from Grease?' Because everything was tied up really nicely with Danny and Sandy. But I was like, 'What was up with the Pink Ladies? Were those were girl gangs real?' I started googling and I found out that there were real Pink Ladies at the high school of the original creator of Grease, Jim Jacobs."
Eduardo Araquel/Paramount+ Tricia Fukuhara as Nancy Nakagawa, Marisa Davila as Jane Facciano, Cheyenne Wells as Olivia Valdovinos and Ari Notartomaso as Cynthia Zdunowski in 'Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies'
You won't find Frenchie (Didi Conn), Jan (Jamie Donnelly), Marty (Dinah Manoff), or Rizzo (Stockard Channing) here though. Instead, we meet a new group of ladies, led by Jane (Marisa Davila). Though, the legacy of the original wasn't lost on the cast. "It's a really big responsibility bringing something this iconic back," says Davila. "Getting to be in the same colorful universe was the way we connected to them and honoring what they were able to do."
Davila describes Jane as a bit of a nerd, saying she's perhaps most similar to Jan in the 1978 film. "She is just passionate about fairness and wanting to be everybody's friend," adds Davila. "She comes on a little too strong and is learning that her incredible personality isn't always accepted by other people. She wants to do what's right. She leads with her heart. She's a student first, so as much as she tends to be a leader, she learns something new every day from her friends."
At its heart, Grease is a story that can fit into any era. It's about teenagers navigating social issues, relationships, and the difficult transition into adulthood. "The characters run into a lot of the same situations that people in the present day might be dealing with," adds Davila.
Indeed, Grease was made in 1978 and Oakes says that it is more directly in conversation with issues of that era (issues, as it happens, central to Minx) than those of its 1950s setting. "In Minx, we were focused on second wave feminism and all the trials and tribulations of that very new movement," she explains. "It's funny to then have been working on Grease and see how the culture of the 1970s affected the way they told the story of Grease. Grease is about breaking out of the expectations of your gender role, both for Sandy and Danny. That's a very '70s story.
"Any time you do a period piece, you are using a little bit of a modern lens and you're talking about what's different and also what hasn't changed," Oakes continues. "It's really interesting to go down both of those paths at once." That also means an opportunity to include characters of color and storylines that wouldn't have been central in 1978, exploring questions of social justice and more.
Oakes and her team still did plenty of research into the 1950s, particularly the lives of women in that era. "I started calling every woman I know who went to school in the '50s," she says. "I started with my mom, then I called her friends, and then I called their friends and then I got a writers' room and they all called their moms and friends and grandmas. We talked to a lot of women who grew up in the 1950s and were actually there. Women of the '50s were the women who were out there in the '60s breaking glass ceilings and boundaries."
While the original film established the Pink Ladies and Thunderbirds as falling into teenage archetypes, from tough to dopey to promiscuous, Oakes wanted to take that framework and go further. "We did use those archetypes, but because TV is a longer format, we get to go a little bit deeper into what's behind those archetypes," she says. "How can we take a character, like Frenchie, who's focused on her future in that way and expand that? What is the Tough Girl and why is she so tough? Stockard Channing in the original movie did such a great job of showing Rizzo's toughness, but also showing the vulnerability underneath. We get to go even deeper with our characters because we have more time with them."
With those central tenets in place, there were still two major questions: What would the iconic Pink Ladies jacket look like? And how would music feature in the storytelling?
The jacket went through several iterations, and Davila says she tried on multiple prototypes as the costume designer tried to hone in on a specific design. Ultimately, they went with something that felt like a forerunner to the jackets in the 1978 film.
"We did really look at the original Pink Lady jacket, but we tried to put our own spin on it," says Oakes. "What I'll say is that there's a specific film reference for our Pink Ladies jacket that has to do a lot with teenage rebellion in the 1950s." (Oakes won't name it but James Dean's red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause is as iconic as they come and these pink jackets bear a striking resemblance to it).
As for the music, Rise of the Pink Ladies found their hitmaker in pop songwriter Justin Tranter, who wrote Justin Bieber's "Sorry" and has written for everyone from Selena Gomez to Britney Spears to Imagine Dragons. In fact, Tranter is such a successful songwriter that Oakes was skeptical the production could lock them down.
"But they were really excited to do a project where they got to create a body of work and where the pop stars are the characters," says Oakes. "In the same way they would go and interview a pop star and find out what's in their soul, we get to have that process talking about our fictional characters. That's a really cool new process for them."
In the end, Tranter wrote 31 original songs for the series — and in the cast's opinion, every single one is a bop. "I worked on the show for seven months straight and I still listen to the music every day," says Davila. "There's absolutely no way you can get tired of them. It's a no-skip soundtrack. Justin and their team managed to mold together the old '50s style of music with a modern day take on it."
Oakes says the music, including standards from the period that feature in the score, has been composed with an eye toward the roots of rock & roll. "1954 is a very early part of rock & roll when it was transitioning from R&B," says Oakes. "It's R&B with an amp. We want to pay tribute to the real people who started rock & roll — Black musicians, Latinx musicians, who were at the forefront. We want those in the show."
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (which will hit Paramount+ in early 2023) may be putting a new spin on things, but whether it's 1978 or 2023, Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.
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