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Jenji Kohan wants TV writers to ditch dystopian stories in favor of ones that lean into a ‘protopia’ and serve up a more positive vision of the world and where we’re headed. The writer was also quizzed about whether she liked the notion of sequel to her show Weeds. It’s safe to say she does not want to light up a follow-up to her pot-dealing drama, which ran for eight seasons on Showtime.
Kohan gave a wide-ranging masterclass to a room of writers and drama execs at Seriesly, and duly delivered one of the highlights of the newbie TV event in Berlin. She wrote on shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City and the first season of Friends. She talked about her own shows during the masterclass including Orange Is The New Black and Weeds. Deadline’s scoop last year said a sequel to the latter was, at that time, being put together by Lionsgate TV for Showtime (now Paramount+ with Showtine) with a different writer.
When it comes to the notion of a sequel, Kohan is definitely a Weeds killer. “I feel like now that pot is legal [in many places] that I don’t really know if there’s more story to tell,” she said. “I think Weeds was done, and I think it’d be a money grab a little bit, and I’m not involved with it.”
Adding that she does not own the IP, but her instinct would be to nix a sequel, she said. “They can do what they want, but this wouldn’t be associated with the team that made it, and I think there are many other stories to be told. I think Weeds was of its time and it’s not as relevant anymore.”
Ditch the Dystopia
Meanwhile, Kohan is done with TV serving up hellish visions of the future. She advocated a protopia, a neologism coined by future-gazer Kevin Kelley and which describes something of a middle ground between dystopia and utopia.
“Dystopia is bad for us, it’s sh***y, it’s lazy, and I’m on a huge kick to say: ‘Stop with the f*cking dystopia’. We’re being fed this diet of dystopia and then [over time] we remember this idea we’ve been given that the future is a dumpster fire, and then we manifest it,” Kohan said.
She added: “I don’t think utopia is a greater story, not much happens. But there’s this new word that’s being thrown around – ‘protopia’ – where, basically, the future is flawed but we’re on our trajectory towards something better. Life also has a lot of beautiful things in it, and it’s so easy and so destructive to say everything is shit. I want to urge everyone to abandon that.”
Taking questions from the Berlin crowd, she clarified that she’s not advocating for always having happy endings. “You’ll always hate your mother-in-law, or you know, have bad sex, or argue with someone, or have a car accident, or whatever it is; the point is there’s always conflict. But I think there has to be an acknowledgement that in the world there is also joy and there’s also hope.”
