It’s pretty bold to launch a show on the premise that says that it speaks for an entire generation, but that’s exactly what HBO Max’s Genera+ion is: bold.
The new half-hour drama follows a group of teenagers as they navigate the hell that is high school. Though it’s a premise that’s been executed hundreds of times, what sets Genera+ion apart is its unrelenting authenticity. From cringe-worthy jokes, whiplash-inducing rants about deep societal injustices, and errant jizz, Genera+ion is one of the first shows that seems to truly capture the essence of Gen Z.
These characters’ need for social reform is strong. Their fearlessness in the face of such horrors as school shooting drills and climate change is admirable. Yet beneath these heavy subjects there is an unmodulated, embarrassing messiness, the sorts of big dreams and bigger emotions that can only stem from adolescence. Decider spoke to Genera+ion’s creators — Daniel, Zelda, and Ben Barnz — about how they managed to capture the complexities and sexual experimentation of modern high school life. And, most shockingly of all, how they managed to do that as a family.
Decider: How important was it for the actors to look like they were actually in high school?
Zelda Barnz: That was really important to us. That was something we wanted to try and make sure we really captured. It can be very difficult as a teenager watching shows with like 26-year-old models playing 15-year-olds. We definitely wanted to make sure that our actors looked like potentially real kids.
Daniel Barnz: It made for a very interesting casting process because Zelda was in the room, obviously. Everybody kind of came in and she would — it was really interesting to get the perspective of someone who is that age saying, “You know what? That person looks like somebody I could go to school with.” Sometimes people would look young but they would carry themselves like somebody who was much older or had the confidence of somebody who’s much older. She was such a great North Star for us to be able to say, “Oh yeah, that person feels real.” We did end up with this extraordinary cast who not only look like teenagers but are also brilliant actors. That was really, really lucky for us.
Genera+ion gets pretty sexually explicit from Episode 1. Did you ever get any pushback from HBO Max on these scenes that feature such young actors?
ZB: No. They’ve always been very supportive of our choice to make this feel as authentic as possible. If that means that it has to be a bit explicit then they’re supportive of that, yeah.
Were there any scenes where HBO Max gave the note that this was too much?
DB: To be honest with you, actually the opposite. They were always pushing us to make sure that it felt real. If we had a scene, for example, that involves characters sexting, they would say, “Don’t be afraid to be honest and graphic here and we’ll support you in that decision.” Which honestly is such a phenomenal and rare thing to have with your studio. They were amazing that way.
So much of this show feels like when I was in high school and all the things I shouldn’t have been doing but was doing behind my parents’ backs, which brings me to my next question. You all are a fathers-and-daughter writing team. What’s that dynamic like especially when things get R-rated?
ZB: Honestly, yeah, it was a bit strange at first, I think. Then we realized that in order for the show to exist in the most authentic way possible we had to be honest with each other. We’ve always been a very open family. We’re all about openness and honesty, and we can kind of talk about anything. So it was definitely a bit odd at first but I think we quickly reached a place where we want this to feel as real as possible and here’s what we have to do in order to do that.
DB: There was definitely a lot of blushing early on.
ZB: Yeah.
DB: From all of us. But one thing that was really such an unintended and kind of beautiful result from working on this show is that it wasn’t just that Zelda was trying to be honest about what it was like to be a teenager. In the course of talking about this show creatively we were able to learn more about each other as people. That’s something that feels so rare to have between parents and kids. It’s something that I feel incredibly grateful for.
Ben Barnz: I would also just add that I think that’s our hope. One of our hopes with the show is that possibly this will start opening up conversations between other families and parents and children.
Several times throughout the series you see a head-butting between different generations. You see it with Megan (Martha Plimpton) and her bi so Nathan (Uly Schlesinger) as well as with Arianna (Nathanya Alexander) and her dads. What was it like creating those scenes coming from different generations? And how much were you echoing your relationships in some ways?
DB: Well, echoing in some ways but hopefully not in others. I hope we’re not having quite the same reaction. But I think the thing that’s great about not just being fathers and daughter but of different generations is that we have different perspectives. There are things Zelda can say, “This feels really true for myself and people my age.” And then there are things that Ben and I can say, “This feels really true for us and how people respond.”
Some of the things that Martha Plimpton’s character says about kids and how she feels like people are just trying out different trends and so on, these are things that we’ve heard from people of our age and then have tried to represent in it. It’s obviously about that generational divide. It’s a little bit more amplified in our show because the show is set in Anaheim, and we wanted to set it in Anaheim in order to have a kind of conservative world where a lot of these kids would be trying to navigate and figure out. Martha Plimpton’s character Megan is a bit more representative of a conservative part of our generation, which I think Ben and I would like to think we’re not as conservative.
I wanted to highlight Episode 2, which is an episode about a school-wide lockdown after a school shooting scare. It’s so chilling because it should be an extraordinary circumstance, but it doesn’t feel like it because these kids have experienced lockdowns so often. What went into crafting this episode?
ZB: We had a lot of conversations about lockdowns — crafting that episode — and lockdown drills and how frequent they are… It’s really just something that’s become very normalized for my generation. It freaked me out a little bit every time when we would get into a lockdown drill or a real one. It would go on for so long. Kids were often nonchalant about it. That was always so scary to me because I was a little bit like, “This shouldn’t be normal. It’s horrifying that this is normal.” But they do get very boring.
That was one of the main things we wanted to make clear with this episode. I don’t think we’ve seen that before. Oftentimes what will happen, what lockdowns look like, is a lot of kids trapped in a room sometimes upwards of five hours and we’re really hungry and we’re really bored. Those are kind of the main emotions, honestly.
DB: It’s so interesting because I feel like Zelda and her generation have had to confront mortality in a way that other generations have not. Including, of course, living in a COVID world. I think one of the things we were really trying to explore in that episode was this really nuanced relationship that they have with mortality where they’re aware of it, it’s frightening, elements of it are scary. But it’s also something that they’re living with all the time. So they make dark jokes about it, and they’re looking for ways to distract themselves and be funny. That was something we really wanted to reinvent with that episode. Not have the scary, everyone-hiding-under-their-desks, there-is-actually-a-school-shooter episode but more like what Zelda described where there is a lockdown drill and you don’t quite know if it’s real or if it’s not.
You certainly see this complicated relationship with mortality through Chester’s (Justice Smith) monologue where he says he wants to conquer over his fear of death.
DB: I think also Delilah (Lukita Maxwell) has a really interesting moment too where she says, “I just want to go to college.” It’s funny because we were working on that episode before the pandemic began ,and then we were finishing it during the pandemic. It was really interesting how it shifted a little bit in our minds in terms of thinking. That line always resonated for me. I think about all the kids who have had their college dreams delayed and how they just want to be able to go and live their lives in these sort of normal ways that are really really hard right now.
I also wanted to talk a bit about social media and smartphones’ role in the show. We’ve seen so many shows try to incorporate it, and sometimes it’s OK and sometimes it’s awful. But Genera+ion does a great job of making phones feel like they’re an essential part of the narrative. What were your conversations about that like?
BB: Thank you so much. Because the number of people who have contributed and put in hours and hours to make those phones work, for everyone who worked on it, it was a feat. It was super important to us and to Zelda to get it right.
ZB: Absolutely. I agree with you. Sometimes in media phone usage — it’s definitely a difficult thing to perfect and conquer. It’s very difficult to figure out how to format those scenes. We had so many conversations about it. For a brief moment we talked about having words appear on screen near our characters. But in the sense of trying to make our show feel as real as possible, we wanted to actually see the phones and the screens. Basically the biggest conversations were just how to make social media usage feel real and how kids use digital media to communicate
BB: Also, what I want to throw in on top of that it was really important to Zelda. She often saw on TV shows that it was skewed towards the negative — social media and phones and texting. There’s such a crucial element now to these kids’ lives and it’s just their truths. It’s just a generational thing on some level, too. We, as older people, can judge that. But to them it’s just their life, and there’s so much positive that comes with these devices and the worlds that they connect and people that they’re able to connect to because of these sites outside of their families. There’s a beauty to it.
DB: It’s also just their language. We felt like in order to be speaking — if we wanted to say this show is going to try to represent Gen Z as authentically as possible, then we had to speak in their language. And that language is the language of social media. Thank you again for saying that. It’s impossible to describe just how technically hard it was pulling off the camera and the focus and everything.
The first three episodes of Genera+ion are on HBO Max now. The series continues with two new episodes on March 18, two episodes on March 25, and one episode on April 1.
Watch Genera+ion on HBO Max