Be Here Nowish

We hope you’re not doing anything this weekend because the first four episodes of Be Here Nowish just dropped, and you’re definitely gonna wanna watch this series. In case you missed it, the show’s co-creators Alexandra Roxo and Natalia Leite launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund their female-driven comedy about “two sexually progressive New York gals who ditch their down-and-out lives for LA in search of a spiritual awakening,” which means, yes, we’ve been waiting nearly a year for this. So, we caught up with Alexandra and Natalia to talk to them firsthand about their highly-anticipated series debut, working with Karley Sciortino (a.k.a Slutever), and what’s lacking in the current TV landscape.

So, you raised money for your show on Kickstarter in 2013, and today you’re officially releasing your first four episodes. How does it feel?

Yeah, we’re both really excited. We’ve been working on the show for the past year. We’re both DIYers, so we’ve been writing, baking, editing—doing a lot. We also have an amazing crew of people working with us, and we’ve worked with so many of our friends who we couldn’t do it without. They’re each 6-8 minutes, and there’s a few that are longer, so it was a big undertaking.

Did you know Karley Sciortino and the rest of the cast before you started shooting?

No. I mean Liz (Armstrong) is a friend of mine that I’ve known for a few years, but we’re kind of all in the same community of friends here in New York. Most of the people we’ve brought on, with the exception of a handful of people who came on as friends of friends, we had relationships with. A lot of them hadn’t been on camera before. It started off just as a fun thing we were doing with friends and so all of the success that it’s had has been amazing. Karley’s been great because our show works with a lot of improv too, and she contributes a lot of ideas on the spot. Some of our favorite lines are things that she’s randomly said, and it was just genius.

So, how did you two meet?

We met through mutual friends in New York at a party, and we had a really nice chat that first night. We were both single and started hanging out and going out to clubs. Then, we just started working together because we were both working in film. An opportunity came up for us to do a documentary in Cuba, and I couldn’t go, so I asked her if she wanted to go instead so we could work on it together. That was our first project. It was a three week shoot in Cuba, plus a two week shoot in New York, and we ended up doing that project, selling it to Vice and they put it out last year. It was just the start of our working relationship, and it went so well. We didn’t really know each other very well at the time, but mutually it just felt right, and it didn’t really break. We decided really quickly that we work well together and so we formed this partnership.

How did you come up with the premise for your Be Here Nowish?

We wanted to make a show about the community that we feel we’re a part of. There’s a lot of shows about young women in our demographic, but we didn’t really feel that there was anything that spoke to the things that we’re most interested in. (laughs) So we started writing from that, writing from our lives, writing from our community, thinking about the funny things that happen to us in our love lives, dating, and with our spirituality. It grew—we brought in other friends, and they contributed, and we did a lot of improv. It’s just a reflection of our world that we felt like other people would relate to. We didn’t know if people would relate to it, and we didn’t have high expectations, we were just like, “Let’s do this with our friends!” When we did our Kickstarter campaign, that was when we realized other people were looking for this type of work and people responded so positively just from a two-minute trailer. They’ve literally been responding for the past year just because of that one trailer. We thought that it’s interesting that there are people out there that are looking for a different kind of female character, that have different things that they aspire to in their lives that we don’t get to see as much.

What is the current TV/web series landscape lacking, and what is Be Here Nowish bringing that’s fresh and new?

One of the things that’s important to our characters is their spiritual paths, and in some ways, just exploring and being curious about that. I don’t see that much on television—characters actively seeking and searching for that. Especially in our generation and community, people in our age range that are a member of active New York that go out, have a social circle and go to parties and are interested in fashion and art, and also have a side where they want to be grounded and meditate. We’re very much involved in the queer community, and that’s something that gets very little exposure in the media and is very much in a box and very cliché. We want our show to express diversity of what that community really is. Having a range of personalities and choices and being creative.

What were your main challenges while creating this series?

The funding was really a challenge. We really had to be working full time to get the word out and to get people beyond our circle of friends to donate because our friends could only give $5, $10, $20—not a lot of them can afford to give more than that. It was really rewarding at times because it was such a DIY process that it was like, “OK, we have an idea, but let’s find out what location we can get for free, and we don’t have any money to rent lights so let’s just get together some lamps.” (laughs) We were really creative with how to make it look like it had a higher production value and made with a lot more money than it actually was.

Was there a moment of filming or fundraising or part of the process that you are particularly proud of?

Well, after our Kickstarter we were able to go back out to LA and shoot and bring some of our cast and our crew, and it was a really awesome week. We went to this colon hydrotherapy clinic, and they were like, “Yeah, you can shoot here. Sure, I’ll be in it.” We shot at this place, The House of Intuition, which is really amazing. Everything was super smooth and felt really professional, and it wasn’t a struggle because we were giving back to people that were giving to us. That really felt like a victory. And we all had just a fun time shooting, and everybody was in a good mood. Those are the moments that make it worth it. In those moments it’s not so much about the end product, it’s about everybody coming together and making something we believe in.

What was your process like? Did you all sit down together and write it first and then go out and shoot, or did you figure it out on the fly?

It was mostly Natalia and me. We did a lot of brainstorming before we started shooting anything, but because it was sort of spread out over a year, we were working on this on and off, things sort of changed naturally. Some characters we weren’t able to get, so we’d have to take them off the show—things like that were happening. So we ended up having to rewrite and rethink certain things along the way as we were creating it.

Your show seems to focus on sexuality and being open about your sexuality as a female. Why do you think that’s important for people to talk about?

The one thing that Natalia said earlier about our community not being really reflected on television, that was a starting point. It’s something really specific that we wanted to express. Also, for women in the media who are pursuing and enjoying sex and having sexual experiences—even if it’s weird to other people—and getting pleasure from it, is so important because there’s so many shows out there where sex is more about the men, including shows like Girls, where you don’t see the girls enjoying sex a lot of the time in that show, or where they’re doing weird things for their pleasure. We thought it was important to show what’s more real to us, you know? So then women can talk about it and not think, “Oh, men only talk about that.”

Where do you look for inspiration?

Our friends, our community—that’s the most inspiring thing. We’ll be sitting at a dinner party and someone will be like, “Oh my god I went to this crazy breathing workshop the other day where they put me in a closet and clanked a pot against the wall,” and we’re like, “Hahaha, that’s amazing. Let’s all go check it out!” and then I’ll write about it. Those are the kind of moments that happen between us and our friends when we’re hanging out. We’re sharing things and we’re laughing at each other at some of the ridiculous things we do and then we’re able to pull from that and tighten it and use it however we want to for the show. That’s what’s been most inspiring to me.

In the last year or so people have been obsessed with talking about the lack of females in comedy. Do you think it’s a problem?

I think that’s definitely trending, big time. I think that there are a lot more women in comedy in the last few years than there has been in a long time. I feel like there are so many female-driven comedy work shows out there right now and maybe they’re all just bubbling to the surface.

So what’s next for you two?

We’re going to be releasing the following episodes every Thursday of the week, throughout the month of April, and they’re going to come out in batches too. The next week will be 3 more episodes, and the whole show will be released in the month of April. After that, we have a lot of ideas of where we want to take it next, whether that means we do a second show online, or ideally, we’d love to take it to television and adapt it for longer episodes for TV. We’re making plans for that and working on that.

Do you have any advice for aspiring female filmmakers?

Just do what you want to do. I think right now with the internet, Instagram and Twitter and everything, it’s easy to live in other people’s lives and their curated world. I think the best thing you can do is be totally yourself and not be afraid of that in any way.

How do you manage to stay so confident while filming?

Surround yourself with people that you really respect and that are good influences on you. In our hearts, we all know if the people we’re hanging out with are helping challenge us to be better versions of ourselves or not. Because there’s always going to be those days where you wonder, “Why am I doing this? It’s so dumb,” and that’s when you’ll look to your friends and the people around you to tell you that you’re just having a rough day and that they’re proud of you and to just keep doing it. It is hard, and there are moments where you do want to give up. I think having a community of good friends around you that encourage you to be the better you sounds cheesy as hell, but it’s true! (laughs)