Interview: USyd Alum Produce Comedy Series “Privileged” About Uni Life

By Nicolette Petra

You know that TV show you’ve always wanted to write and shoot with your friends? Simone La Martina and Aaron Lucas have actually gone and done it. Imagine the satirical quirk of The Office, fused with the pretence and sophistication of Suits, meets ‘coming of age’ comedy-drama Sex Education – and you’ve got Privileged.

If there’s one thing that’s become pertinently obvious during my university studies, it’s that the Australian university experience is one rarely portrayed in entertainment. It’s often the case that education-based series are focused on unrealistic happenings outside the classroom: there’s a murder to be uncovered, a mystery to be solved, or a whirlwind romance to be had (I’m looking at you, How to Get Away With Murder and Riverdale). And sure, while these plot points might be tried and tested ways to keep viewers hooked until the next episode, it’s difficult for any twenty-something year old student to relate to the characters and their lives.

Simone La Martina also noticed this gap in entertainment during her time studying Arts and Law at the University of Sydney, and since graduating has set out to remedy the problem. Drawing from her on-the-ground experience and having impressively produced Law Revue in 2019, La Martina teamed up with Aaron Lucas, Wollongong acting graduate and short film maker, and fellow USyd Law graduates, Tom St John and James Kwong, to write, produce, and shoot Privileged, a comedy series following seven students through the ups and downs of prestigious university life, from society elections and battling it out for internships, to forging friendships and dealing with the ugly underlying competitive tensions that sometimes bubble to the surface.

I sat down with La Martina and Lucas to talk about the series, reflect on how their university experiences informed the production, and discuss the prospect of having the series picked up by a major network.

Nicolette Petra (NP): How did you get started on the series? What was its genesis?

Simone La Martina (SLM): I felt like university students weren’t represented in the media I was consuming. I’ve always wanted to create something for our demographic, especially since there are millions of university students, and no shows about us. We tend to watch more US shows and know more about US colleges than our own. So I had the idea floating around in the back of my head for a while.

Then I reached out to my friend Tom, who I had done law revues with. There was a lot of sketch writing initially and it was really just a nostalgic thing for us after finishing uni. Then it became the real deal.

Aaron Lucas (AL): The way I became involved was through my Acting degree which led me to theatre, where I met Simone through a play we did together, Macbeth.

NP: How long has Privileged been in the works?

SLM: I decided to pursue it seriously in April. At that point we were planning to shoot it really low budget, sort of guerrilla style. We sent it out, more people got on board, and we were able to attract some investors.

AL:  Choosing to not go the low-fi way, and shoot it expensively was a conscious decision. To be taken seriously as emerging artists, we’ve got to show something that the show is really appetising to networks.


NP: So how did acting, theatre, and revues help with the production of Privileged?

AL: In the last few years, I’ve been making short films, music videos, and sketch comedy. I made one other pilot 2 years ago but when it got optioned we lost power of it, so we felt it was important that if Privileged was optioned, we’re able to make decisions over the direction it takes.

SLM: All through my degree I was an actor working on side projects. All through university, I knew law wasn’t for me. Originally, my plan was to move to LA but with Covid-19, that didn’t happen. The reason I wanted to go though, is because Australia has such a small entertainment industry in comparison to the US. It’s hard to be an emerging creative in Australia because people hire their friends, so the roles and positions stay in a tight-knit community. To break into the industry, we’ve had to work twice as hard.

AL: Simone also stars in the series as one of the leads.

NP: That’s so exciting! Does that mean we’ll be seeing a lot of your own personal experience of university and law school in the series?

SLM: I mean, it draws on personal experience but it’s comedy, so it’s definitely heightened. In the first episode there’s a cocktail evening for clerkships, and in it I’ve drawn on that bizarre, sterile environment where everyone’s in suits, talking over each other, which is something I experienced during clerkships.

AL: There’s also lots about being a woman in law school. Simone’s character, Amelia, has a strong storyline and goes head to head with another character in the pilot.

SLM: Yeah, we unpack the misogyny that underlies law school and legal industry as a whole. There were little nuances I picked up on during law school that told me ‘Oh, I’m not the same’ as the males. There was a sort of boys’ club and that continued post-university when the men go and grab beers together and you’re not invited. Things like that.

NP: I take it that even though it’s a comedy, the show also explores some more serious issues?

SLM: It’s changed a lot over time. It started as a laugh, but the more we delved into it the more we found it was very political – there’s critiques of the education system, nepotism, and gender privilege. In one episode, this egotistical male character runs a women’s celebratory event where he calls out women’s names and applauds them. There’s another scene where a partner pinches a young female’s bum and she plays it off.

These are unfortunately things that aren’t outside the realm of possibility of what happens in the industry. We’ve seen it when men in the industry abuse their positions of power over long periods of time but it’s sort of accepted or not discussed. Many of us have heard stories from female friends of experiencing working late when there’s one male partner left in the office. What we’ve aimed to do with the series is make these issues more digestible.

NP: It’s great to hear you’re addressing sexism in the show. What else have you done to address diversity and inclusivity in Privileged?

SLM: Since the show is a satire about privilege we wanted to look at it through a lens that captured that. So we look at gender privilege but we also look at racial privilege. A lot of the ways law schools and the legal industry deal with diversity and racial problems is tokenistic. As a white woman, I’m aware my experience of law school is different from other people’s so I wanted the cast to reflect the real diversity of law school by including people from different backgrounds and therefore showing privilege in different ways. Essentially, the characters come from various backgrounds but they’re united in being from an educationally privileged system. While most of the show takes place mostly at uni, we’ve also included snippets of characters’ personal lives. One character fights for racial justice but has to make a decision to work for a firm which she knows work for companies that counteract her views which is a look at the morality versus soul selling conundrum many people face post-university.

AL: A large part of casting involved scouting people we’d seen through acting communities comedy circles. We knew that for the show to accurately represent university, having actors of different cultural backgrounds was really important. We put that high on our priorities. As much as this is a satire and we’re pointing out what’s wrong with a lot of things in the system, what drew me to the project was that these characters are based on real people that our audience can relate to and identify with.

SLM: The other thing was that when something felt predictable during writing, Tom and I tried to flip it. We wanted the show and its characters to be so far from cliché, and we’ve managed to do a good job at it – it’s raw and quirky, and a lot of that comes down to our amazing cast’s execution.

AL: Agreed. Chemistry makes the funny cast. It’s electric when you see them all working together.

NP: Speaking of your audience, do you have any advice for current university students?

AL: Get involved in whatever you can, as much as you can.

SLM: I had a really good time at law school for a lot of reasons, but one was my tight knit group of friends. So, I’d say find a great group of people. And give each other notes as well.

NP: When can we expect to see Privileged on our screens?

SLM: Soon, hopefully! We have a crowdfunding page where we’ve almost reached our goal, and we’re pitching to networks and streaming services like ABC, Netflix and Stan who are seeking original content. The fact they don’t have a lot of university-based shows is promising.

AL: The point of us shooting the pilot rather than simply going to networks with a script is that the Australian entertainment industry tends to want to take the safe bet and get a return on their investments. By shooting the pilot, we’re essentially showing rather than telling them what the series would look like.

SLM: Ironically, the shows we’re seeing on Australian TV networks aren’t pulling huge numbers. Australian entertainment is often quite unimaginative, in that it’s hard for them to see how new shows would work, which is why we’ve taken that variable out of the equation by filming the pilot first ourselves. It may take a few months more of pitching, but we’re willing to put in the work. We really believe in the show.

Follow the series on Facebook at Privileged // The Series.

You can support Privileged by donating to their crowdfunding page and check out their promo content here.