Unique CRAVE ORIGINAL SERIES NEW EDEN Aiming To Be A ‘Cult Classic’

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede The innocent dream of two completely inexperienced and ill-equipped visionaries was to start a large-scale feminist utopia on an isolated rural property in the late 1970s. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the comically disturbing answer presents itself in full detail over eight half-hour episodes of NEW EDEN, a new CRAVE ORIGINAL SERIES presented in the style of a true-crime documentary, that’s set to debut on Wednesday, Jan. 1. Showrunners Kayla Lorette and Evany Rosen star as Katherine Wryfield and Grace Lee, respectively, the masterminds behind the groundbreaking communal project who are left to recount the gruesome details from the relative safety of prison. We caught up with Lorette and Rosen to set up this chaotic, cautionary, and comedic tale of good intentions gone bad: Q: From the episodes I’ve seen, it may sound odd, but I’m actually starting to have a less positive view of cults. Kayla Lorette: (Laughter) “Yes, that’s the correct takeaway from the show.” Evany Rosen: “Right, people have been saying cults are great for years, so we thought, ‘We have to take this down.’ ” Q: There are quite a few layers to NEW EDEN, so which part of the idea came first? Kayla Lorette: “The cult and true-crime elements kind of emerged at the same time. Evany and I were going to come up with an idea and pitch a show, and we both are such big fans of true-crime documentaries, and we’re fascinated by cults. So that was the jumping-off point. And then for the era, cults were just sort of more prevalent in the ’70s, and that decade was also good for us to talk about certain elements of feminism that we wanted to explore.” Q: Just in regard to the visual details, you probably made your lives more difficult by deciding to do a period piece. Evany Rosen: “A lot of people told us throughout the process that it would’ve been a lot easier had we set it in modern times. But for this story in particular, it really felt like the late ’70s was the logical time, with the kind of hangover of the ’60s, and women realizing that ‘free love’ was actually not so fun to them. We also knew the story had to span at least 15 years, so we kind of worked forward from the ’70s. In short, we knew we had made a mistake before we even started, but then we just committed to it and went ahead anyway.” Q: And yet the manner in which you tell the tale seems very modern, because the true-crime genre is so hot right now. Kayla Lorette: “It’s definitely to our advantage. We could bend and weave within the genre itself, but it was absolutely always a goal for us to properly send up true crime as a genre, because we know that people are just such dedicated fans these days.” Evany Rosen: “I think true-crime documentaries are sort of a safe way for viewers to explore the worst of what can happen to you, particularly for women, who are so often the victims of true crime. That’s part of the reason why we wanted to support women as perpetrators in this show. Flip the script.” Q: A thought struck me while watching the scenes where Katherine and Grace are being interviewed in prison, sitting beside each other: At some point in our lives, we’re just stuck with the friends we have, right? Evany Rosen: “Our favourite joke about their relationship is that Katherine is the girl who invited everyone in the class to her birthday party and only Grace showed up. And Grace didn’t mind that no one else was there. She brought a cake, she was into it. So Katherine is this really unlikable person who kind of needs Grace. And Grace, for whatever reason, is kind of obsessed with Katherine. So yeah, it really is this dark thing. You have Grace really wanting to be around Katherine, and Katherine having to accept that even though she doesn’t like Grace all that much, nobody else wants to be around her.” Kayla Lorette: “Katherine is actually disrespectful to Grace all the time, but they’re very codependent.” Q: Let’s end this philosophically: if you know you’re in a cult, does that mean you’re not really in it? Kayla Lorette: “There’s a specific moment where things take a dark turn, and the women look around and think, ‘This is starting to feel like a cult.’ Of course, up to that point they’ve also been on a lot of these psychedelics, so it was hard for them to really have a good boundary with themselves. But if you know you’re in a cult, are you really in a cult? It’s a good question.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv