Phoebe Robinson, the stand-up comedian who with Jessica Williams co-hosted the podcast-turned-HBO series “2 Dope Queens,” is ready to bring her audio skills back to the screen.
Robinson is the creator and star of the upcoming Freeform comedy “Everything’s Trash,” which is adapted from her 2018 essay collection “Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay.” She and showrunner Jonathan Groff leaned into the humor of “Sooo Many White Guys,” her solo spinoff of “2 Dope Queens,” while developing “Everything’s Trash,” in which Robinson plays a fictionalized version of herself that she affectionately refers to as TV Phoebe.
Groff “had listened to some episodes of ‘Sooo Many White Guys’ and really liked the rapport that I had with my producer, Joanna [Solotaroff],” Robinson says. “We wanted to replicate that, because we felt that TV Phoebe’s superpower, and my superpower, is being an empath — highlighting what’s special about someone and then zeroing in on that.”
In “Everything’s Trash,” the other side of the host-producer relationship is Malika (Toccarra Cash). When Phoebe is drowning in the consequences of, say, a nip slip on Instagram Live, Malika is always on the next train over, ready to provide an open ear and tough love in equal measure. That counseling helps Phoebe process her anguish, and by the time she and Malika are back in the studio to record, there’s a more polished version of the story to share with listeners. The juxtaposition between Phoebe’s self-consciousness off air and the brash humor of her podcast is where “Everything’s Trash” really shines.
“There is a performance element of podcasting,” Robinson says. “When you see her off the mic, you see a side that’s less jokey-jokey-jokey. She is making mistakes and owning the trash. She’s being vulnerable — and sometimes also being the one who can save the day, not just make messes. So it’s nice to have the podcast be this place where she’s in the zone and kills it, and then when she’s out in the world, there are more ups and downs.”
Many of those ups and downs happen within the show’s central relationship, that of Phoebe and her brother Jayden (Jordan Carlos). The two are opposites — Phoebe’s propensity for sharing her innermost thoughts with the world creates tension with Jayden’s aspirations as a politician and his picture-perfect life with his wife and daughter — but still, they have a heartwarming bond that’s partially based on Robinson’s experiences with her own brother.
“My brother is a state rep in Ohio. He has kids, he married his college sweetheart — and I’m on a different journey,” Robinson says. “It’s a fun world to explore, because the older you get, you realize there’s no one way to adult. You just sort of have to do the things that are authentic to you.”
That authenticity leads Phoebe to sleep with Hamilton (Brandon Jay McLaren), who works on Jayden’s opponent’s campaign. (Robinson is quick to clarify: “I definitely have never been out here smashing people in my brother’s world. That part is not real life.”) On a different show, such a misstep might be more explosive, resulting in excommunication or insults that can’t be taken back. But here, despite his anger, Jayden never stops looking out for his little sister. In this coming-of-age tale for adults, all is forgivable.
On TV right now, “everything is a true-crime show with a white person in a crazy-ass wig,” Robinson says. “This show is the opposite of that: buoyant and light.”
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