When Victoria Schwab sat down to write a short story for a vampire anthology in 2019, she already knew she would adapt everything she wrote for television. So one of the first questions the author, better known by her pen name, VE Schwab, asked herself was: What kind of vampire show did she want to see?
“I wish I had the ‘Buffy’ that I didn’t have, making room for queer characters,” Schwab said in a video call from Los Angeles last week, referring to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” “Not at the edges, but in the middle of the story.”
Schwab had traveled from Edinburgh, where she lives, to Los Angeles for the premiere of ‘First Kill’, the Netflix series based on her short story of the same name. Schwab is a prolific fantasy author who writes books, stories, and graphic novels for adults and teens, including the 2020 bestselling book “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.” She has developed several television and film adaptations of her works, but this is the first to reach the screen.
“‘Buffy’, ‘Supernatural’, ‘Charmed’ — they didn’t let me down, but they were of their time,” Schwab said. While writing the short story and pilot based on it, she tried to “capture that campy, anxious fun, but for a new generation.”
“First Kill” follows two high school girls who are in love but have a major problem standing in the way of their romance: they should destroy each other.
Calliope Burns, a monster hunter played by Imani Lewis, sets out to prove herself to her family by committing her first murder. At the same time, Juliette Fairmont, a vampire played by Sarah Catherine Hook, must drain a human’s blood to reach adulthood. When the two girls first kiss in a pantry at a house party, their dedication to their duties begins to crumble.
The show follows the structure of a classic teen drama, interspersed with fantastic plot twists. Meaningful longing glances and awkward social interactions in school hallways live side by side with scenes of ghosts rampaging through graveyards, vampires erasing their victims’ memories, and monster hunters sparring in the yard. Since its premiere, ‘First Kill’ has been in the Top 10 most popular shows in the United States on Netflix.
Calliope and Juliette join a rapidly growing group of TV heroes who follow in Buffy’s footsteps. Recent shows like ‘Warrior Nun’, ‘Teenage Bounty Hunters’, ‘Legacies’, ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ and ‘Motherland: Fort Salem’ give their young, sometimes uneasy and confused female protagonists such powers as witchcraft, super strength or an uncanny ability to track people. One difference between these shows and their spiritual predecessors is that they target audiences that crave more representation.
Felicia D. Henderson, the showrunner, lead writer and executive producer of “First Kill,” is an industry veteran who has appeared on shows like “Family Matters,” “Moesha” and the original “Gossip Girl.” In a recent phone call, she described “First Kill” as an offspring of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But, she added, “your kids are never like you — they’re going to do their own thing.”
“First Kill” is a show, Henderson said, “where we normalize queer love, where we normalize a black family in the genre space, where we can further normalize kick-ass young women. As artists, we get a chance to make the world as it should be.”
Schwab spent four months working on the short story, which is about 33 pages long. “I was so deeply aware of how awful it feels to have one character standing up for your whole identity,” she said. “If you have something of something, then that person has to stand on a pedestal. They must be much more idyllic than they are, with far fewer flaws.”
Although she grew up watching and loving “Buffy,” Schwab said, “as a gay woman, ‘Buffy’ doesn’t always serve you well.” Schwab, 34, came out in her late twenties and she believes the show “probably contributed to how long it took me to realize I was gay because I didn’t identify with Willow,” a gay witch character who was Buffy’s best. friend.
“She was so nurturing and so sweet and so kind,” Schwab explained. Because Schwab had no other examples of queer characters on screen or in books, she said, she assumed that if she wasn’t like Willow (or her friend, Tara, who is even sweeter and nicer), she shouldn’t be gay. to be.
It took years for Schwab to find a series that offered queer female characters she was excited about. “L loved ‘Killing Eve,’ especially season 1,” she said. The British series, which debuted in 2018 and ended this spring, follows a global psychopath killer who prefers Vogue-worthy outfits, and the brilliant, determined MI6 investigator who becomes obsessed with her.
“It’s very rare that we get to see female antiheroes, especially those who operate from a place of ambition and self-involvement,” Schwab said. “Men become self-driven, self-obsessed, and women are told to make sacrifices.”
One of the big points Schwab took from “Killing Eve” when writing the pilot of “First Kill” was that the two protagonists had to be on an equal footing as they compete against each other.
“This is not a show about a victim and an aggressor,” she said. “The vampire is not the predator, and the hunter is not the prey, or vice versa. It’s almost a constant battle for strength.”
What appealed to Henderson about Schwab’s pilot “First Kill” was the potential for rich portrayals of black girls and other traditionally underrepresented groups. She compared Laura Winslow, one of the main characters in “Family Matters,” a sitcom Henderson worked on in the 1990s, to Calliope Burns.
“Most of her stories were about finding a boyfriend of her own, or dealing with Urkel’s obsession with her or being the good daughter,” Henderson said of Laura. “Then you come all the way to Calliope Burns, and yes, she’s in high school, yes, she’s in love with the wrong person, but she’s also completely in control of her destiny.”
She added: “We see a young black girl running away from her obsessive neighbor to a young black girl fighting vampires in the middle of the night to keep the world safe.”
For Henderson, making the show was personal. “I have young women in my life who needed this,” she said. She told about her goddaughter, who at sixteen had a lot of trouble coming out. The show, Henderson said, is for girls like her, wherever they are.