“Sometimes I’m like, my brain is in a weird place,” says Megan Park. The actor-turned-director didn’t necessarily set out to become the YA genre whisperer, and yet she’s earned the reputation with only a handful of projects.
The 40-year-old’s first two films, “The Fallout” and “My Old Ass,” are wildly different in tone but both feature young adult actors: “The Fallout” is a drama about the aftermath of a school shooting, while “My Old Ass” is a comedy about a teenager who meets her 39-year-old self while on a mushroom trip.
Park is well-versed in the YA genre, so when she was asked to try her hand at creating a TV show, she jumped at the opportunity.
“When I was an actor, I spent most of my time being a young person playing teenagers on TV shows. And I always felt like most of the time, not all the time, but there was a layer of inauthenticity that was a little bit frustrating,” Park says, over Zoom from her home in Toronto. “I was like, this could be fun to try to make something that has all the soapy elements that I think people love and appreciate about YA, these firsts and summer love and love triangles and all that stuff that’s so great, but also be talking about real stuff and be navigating real human and complicated and messy things.”
Megan Park
Lexie Moreland/WWD
Her first foray into TV is “Sterling Point,” a new Amazon Prime show that premiered Wednesday. The show follows Annie and Connor, twins who were adopted by Manhattanites who couldn’t have children. Their mother died when they were young and they grew up not knowing much about her, so are shocked to one day learn they’ve inherited an island in Canada’s Muskoka District from a grandfather they never knew. Annie decides to head north for some answers, and there she starts to uncover family secrets, first love and a sister she never knew existed.
“This idea of sisterhood was really interesting to me,” Park says. “A lot of YA shows are purely centered on romance. And although there is a level of romance in the show, the core of this is about these two sisters, which I thought was something I would’ve appreciated more in my youth.”
Ella Rubin and Amélie Hoeferle in “Sterling Point.”
Courtesy of Amazon Prime
“Sterling Point” is produced by LuckyChap, who worked with Park on “My Old Ass,” and is co-showrun with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, known for creating TV magic with the likes of “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl.”
Early on in her career, Park starred in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” for its five-season run. Growing up, she didn’t have any examples of how to get into the arts: her dad was a dentist, her mom a teacher. She went to theater camp, which led to some auditions in Toronto.
“I was kind of just trying to find where to put this creative energy,” she says.
While being an actor gave Park her start and success, it didn’t seem to fulfill her in the same way it did her peers.
“Shailene Woodley is one of my closest friends, and we did the show together for a million episodes. And she was so driven. I remember when the movie that really broke her out, ‘The Descendants,’ came around, she was like, ‘this is my role.’ And she worked so hard. And I was with her every step of the way, and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t feel that way,’” Park says. “I’d get auditions and I’d be like, ‘OK, it’s an audition. I’ll learn the lines.’ And then the second I started writing, I was like, ‘oh, oh my God, this is what it was all for.’”
The feeling only grew when she started directing.
“Now I totally understand that passion that my peers used to feel about acting. I also think it all happened the way it should have because I love actors and I have so much respect for them and I know how vulnerable and hard it is,” she says. “And I think that that’s one of my favorite parts about directing is getting to work with actors, because it’s really hard. But yeah, the second I wrote and I started writing, I was like, ‘If things go well, you will never see me in front of you again.’”
Megan Park
Lexie Moreland/WWD
While promoting “Sterling Point,” she’s already begun work on her next film, an Apple original movie with Zoë Kravitz attached. She’s open to more seasons of “Sterling Point” should it work out, but is generally just eager to keep making things with feeling, as uncool as that might sound.
“I talk a lot about, even with the movie I’m making now, there’s this heartfeltness — that’s not the cool word to say. I want to make something heartfelt. I don’t think I hear people say that a lot right now, but I do,” Park says. “And I feel like the movies that I’m drawn to, I think about Chris Columbus a lot who had this ability to take a movie like ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ which is so silly. The concept is insane and not believable, but it’s so real. And there’s this authenticity and this heart: it’s a dad who misses his kids and wants to spend more time with them. So I really love trying to make things that are led first and foremost by the hearts of these characters. I hope that when people watch [‘Sterling Point’], they can honestly relate to each character, and even though people make weird decisions and people aren’t always perfect and aren’t always nice, hopefully you can feel where their hearts are at and there’s a level of that amidst everything else.”
