TV

A Farewell To The Wonderful And Deranged Millennial Fantasy ‘The Bold Type’

It's time to leave Scarlet Magazine and we're so sad!

by Patrick Lenton  1 July 2021
The Bold Type

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Just over three years ago, I was working a couple of hours a week as a contract weekend writer for Junkee, hustling and dreaming of one day becoming a full time journalist. After I finished writing my silly little articles on a Sunday morning I would binge watch the first season of The Bold Type.

The Bold Type was absolutely the brand of millennial fantasy I wanted to live — three young women in New York, hustling for their dream jobs in fashion media. It was glamorous in the sense that people on a staff writers wage were wearing couture clothes to work, but also glamorous because of the impossible utopia that it promoted: happiness under capitalism.

Millennials as a generation are absolutely sick from the myth of the “dream job”, stuffed full of ideas of the impossibly utopian concept that a job can provide happiness, fulfilment, creativity, love, friendship, and community — as well as a pay check. It’s a toxic idea that has helped lead to this current climate of insecure working conditions and poor pay. And media is rife with both.

But not in the world of The Bold Type. It’s a glossy fantasy version of the media, that draws from enough tropes, enough hazy ideas of the truth to make it more than simply a parody, more than a hyperbole. Instead, its flirtation with reality makes it much more dangerous — it makes it aspirational. Who wouldn’t want to work at Scarlet Magazine and find everything in the world they wanted wrapped up in one package?

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When I got my job at Junkee, I couldn’t help but compare the two workplaces, despite the obvious insanity of it all. I knew it was fake, but… unless? Most of the comparisons were just the differences you’d expect to find between a fictional magazine and a real life publication, such as the fact that Jane Sloan seemed to write one 400 word article per month — but I also couldn’t help but relate to the similarities. When Jane was somewhat inexplicably rising through the ranks, so was I. When Kat was learning tough career lessons and being doxxed on social media, so was I. When Sutton was arguing for a pay rise, so was I. Sometimes I comforted myself knowing I was doing better at my job than Jane Sloan. When I took over as Editor of Junkee, and felt the cool waters of imposter syndrome wash over me, I bought myself several items of clothing modelled off Jacqueline Carlyle outfits, and used them as a ridiculous prop for my own self esteem.

Ssometimes, especially in the early days, work at Junkee was incredibly fun. I remember days where i’d be paid to write the most ridiculous articles, and chat to Hollywood celebrities, and pal around with some ridiculously fun people, and also do some mildly good things for the world, and I’d think: this is a scam. I am somehow committing a scam. This is too much fun to be work. At its best, it actually did  somewhat resemble the fantasy of Scarlet Magazine, slightly. Within reason.

That sensation comes through on The Bold Type – the feeling that you’re lucky to be where you are in your life, in your career. It’s why the show has managed to endure and be entertaining for five seasons — and one of the reasons I’m so sad the show is finishing. It feels like the end of a pleasant daydream.

The End Of The Bold Type

“I think bittersweet is the word we’ve been using” says Katie Stevens, who plays the inimitable Jane Sloan on The Bold Type. In honour of the fifth and final season, I was given the chance to speak with the three main cast, Katie Stevens, Meghann Fahy, and Aisha Dee, which obviously feels like a special opportunity to me, considering how deeply and ludicrously I relate to this show.

“I think that it is such a blessing to have gone into this season knowing that it was the last one, so that we can all move through it with intention and just kind of soak in every single moment that we have with each other.”

I was interested in talking to the cast about their experiences wrapping up The Bold Type — because a lot of the show’s seductive fantasy was sold through the incredible rapport and friendship of the three girls at its heart. Was there a real-life beating heart of community and friendship in this show, or was it simply an acting job? And did it even matter?

“I was guilty of being the person who, in the final week, I was like, ‘This is the last scene that we have together in this set, and this is the last line I’m going to say as Jane.’ I was just very extra and very nostalgic with every single moment”, answers Katie. “But, I think that it also… we felt like we were ready to be done for multiple reasons, but especially being that shooting during COVID times is very difficult and exhausting in many ways. But we were very lucky that we had each other, we all lived in the same building, so we only saw each other really to keep our pod small and to be safe during COVID. But personally, these two are like the reason I made it through.”

Meghann Fahy who played Sutton chimes in at this point. We’re all on a Zoom call, and despite the slight awkwardness of the format, they’re all still clearly enjoying each other’s company, and engaging with each other’s answers.

“There was something kind of fun about it. I mean — not being on set. Being on set was really difficult, but we were living in the same building and kind of just hunkering down together for the final season… there was something sort of sweet about that.”

The fact that they clearly love each other warms my heart. It goes to show that there has to be elements of truth in even the most confected fantasies.

A Meaningful Job

Over five seasons, we watched the arc of the millennial fantasy play out — they started out at the near bottom, as staff writers and personal assistants, and over time grabbed more and more of their dream. But it can never just be about the surface level success in this show — it only matters to them because the job is seen as important.

Scarlet Magazine didn’t just give the characters a job, it gave them a purpose in their lives — and the show never hesitated to throw each character head first into that. It is important for millennials to feel like their work is **meaningful**, and each character **believed** that they were able to make the world a better place.

From investigations into sexual assault in the workplace, to explorations of gun control, The Bold Type sometimes followed an almost woke ‘monster of the week’ format, with each new episode attempting to tackle a new “big issue” in society. The format of a fun comedy-drama meant that not every episode managed to do the subject justice, providing only a surface level of exploration — but sometimes they were able to achieve beautiful episodes and moments. A much lauded episode from the first season ‘Carry The Weight’ featured EIC Jacqueline Carlyle revealing her own history of sexual assault in a beautiful and powerful scene.

“I think the Carry the Weight episode was really beautiful” agrees Katie Stevens, when I ask them about the episodes which touched on important issues which resonated with them.

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“I remember for me, personally, doing the episode where it was about the privilege episode, where Kat and Jane had that conversation. I feel like it’s one of the examples of The Bold Type, showing a conversation that, in real life, people often feel really uncomfortable having that conversation. I just have such a vivid memory of filming that episode and that scene in particular and I just remember really just watching Aisha in awe of how she wanted so badly to kind of tell what her experience and what her view on it was, and, the writers kind of gave her the liberty to change some of the lines to make it feel more authentic to her and to her experience.”

The episode in question features a discussion of privilege in regards to both race and class — with Jane annoyed that she lost out on a job due to “diversity” and Kat having to confront the fact that her parents are wealthy enough to give her more opportunities than others. It’s not an easy discussion.

“I feel like the outcome of having done that episode was so many people messaging us both, saying I watched this episode and I paused it so that me and my friend could have this conversation because we’ve always wanted to, both of us, and we never felt comfortable enough to engage in it, and watching the way Kat and Jane did that gave us the courage to have that conversation too, and I feel like that’s something really beautiful that our show does for a lot of people, not just in subject matter like that. I just will always think about shooting that episode.”

The examples of this kind of conversation are basically grouped under millennial experience, and follow exactly the kind of topics that a woke style fashion magazine would cover. It’s fascinating to see how a show goes about recreating an editorial stance for the fictional publication.

“There’s an episode in season two where Sutton is like working at a photo shoot and some of the other assistants that are working there are sort of accusing her of using her sexuality or her flirty self to get ahead, and she has this kind of amazing conversation with Jacqueline,” says Meghann Fahy on the topic.

“Jacqueline says to her, ‘Your light and your personality are the most beautiful thing about you, so don’t ever did that for someone else or change that about yourself to make someone else feel more comfortable.” And it seems like not that big of a conversation, but I actually think that it’s huge because I think that, as women, we’re sort of conditioned from a super young age to be hyper aware of how we are perceived by others, but especially men.

And, I certainly have experienced this and I know that Katie and I should probably have too, which is that you feel like you can’t be nice or else something, someone will think that you’re flirting with them. And for me to even, as Meghann, have that conversation with Malora in that scene was so special to me. It just is something that always sort of stuck with me. I love that they found space for that because it also felt specific to the character, but it was something that really, really resonated with me as an individual as well. I thought that was cool.”

“I think in general I find Kat to be quite inspiring,” points out Aisha Dee. “Her courage and her willingness to fail and make mistakes and immediately see the lesson in it has always been in the inspiring to me. I loved the way that she approached discovering herself and she’s just someone who I think is really cool. And I know that she doesn’t always make the right choice, but she always like owns her choices.”

An Egg In My Hoo-Ha

But it’s also worth remembering that while all these worth episodes and topics are important, and worth discussing, the show is also about joy and fun and weirdness. Scarlet Magazine is definitely woke, but it’s also fluffy and fun and about fashion, and it’s a huge part of what makes this show so good, and so beguiling. Girls just wanna have fun.

“I would say for me, the yoni egg scene was the first scene that I was kind of like, ‘Oh, our show is fun and different and we’re going to talk about stuff that’s uncomfortable, but real. And we’re going to get to do it together.'” points out Katie Stevens, about the infamous scene from the first season in which Jane decides to road test a jade yoni egg and insert it into her vagina. Hilarity ensues as her friends are forced to remove it themselves, in the fashion closet at work.

“It was just I had never watched a show that did something like that. And it was funny, but sincere. I think that that is something that we kind of took with us in terms of an energy that we had throughout doing the whole show. I just remember that filming, that was one of the first scenes that the director and the producers were kind of like, ‘We want you to ad lib. We want you to make this your own.’ Our director used to whisper secrets to us to be like, ‘Okay, so you’re going to do this during Katie’s take. And you’re going to try to mess her up.’ So Aisha was, instead of pulling up a yoni egg, she was pulling out keys and a rubber duck and a wallet. And then Meghann was talking about us being drunk on a beach with puppies… that wasn’t in the script. It was just like so early on, and it was just like this is kind of the starting point. And this is like where we have to work from, which made doing the show so exciting.”

I’m The Head Of The Dot Com

In this final season, Jane is groomed to be Editor in Chief, Sutton is doing the styling work she always wanted, and Kat is back in the fold — they’re at the apex of this little money dream we’ve invented, rewarded for the work they’ve done, appreciated by their company, validated for making their workplace the centre of their glamorous and exciting lives. A delightful idea, and one that’s incredibly satisfying to watch, a charming facsimile of the real world that blurs out the sharp edges and realities of the mythical dream job.

Once again I manage to find too many symmetries from my own life in this show — as the show ends, so does my time at Junkee, submitting my resignation as Editor a few days before the finale.

As I’ve grappled with the stressful job of running a publication through a pandemic, I’ve often wondered how the show would tackle something as un-glamorous as something like digital media burn out? I would think “what would Jacqueline do? What would Jane do?”. But I would come up short, because baby they’re fictional. The Bold Type loves to talk about the importance of work, but even The Bold Type knows that shows and jobs have to end eventually.

I think after I leave, my memories will turn my time at Junkee into something even closer to The Bold Type — a rose (or scarlet?) tinted version, with the sharp edges of real employment all sanded away, so that only a highlight reel of the good fluffy stuff remains. I’ll be left with three abbreviated seasons of all the fun stuff I got to work on (the week of content we devoted only to the year 1999 or the concept of horniness spring to mind), the articles I wrote, the brilliant lifelong friends I made, and especially as the editor, the really good and important work I did, the voices we elevated, the topics we covered, the communities we supported. I’m excited for my brain to cut things down into a highlight reel.

This article breaks a cardinal editorial rule at Junkee, but I’ve done it because I figure it would be the best tribute I could think of to Jane Sloan: inserting myself unnecessarily into a story, and somehow making it more about me than anything else. Farewell! To me and to The Bold Type.

All five seasons of The Bold Type are currently streaming on Stan.

Patrick Lenton is the Editor (but not for very much longer) of Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.