NOTE: This Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies interview has been edited for clarity.
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is a prequel series taking place four years before the events of Grease (1978). This time, the narrative isn’t solely focused on getting teenagers romantically paired up. Instead, the story is fanning the flames of anti-establishment rebellion.
Series stars Marisa Davila and Cheyenne Isabel Wells are two of the new Pink Ladies and sat down to share about their work on this exciting new series.
Wells portrays Olivia, a Mexican student whose brother Richie is the leader of the T-Birds. Olivia has unfairly gained a bad reputation at school after a teacher groomed her into a ‘romantic’ entanglement, for which she was blamed. Olivia is frequently subjected to hyper-sexualisation and objectification by both students and adults.
LadyJenevia: Cheyenne, can you share about the experience of doing Olivia’s musical number, I believe it’s called “Sorry that I distract you”, where she gets to rally against this hyper-sexualisation that everyone else projects onto her? That was by far one of my favourite Olivia moments in the first five episodes.
Cheyenne Isabel Wells: Thank you! I absolutely love that number. It is so much fun and it was so much fun to do as well. That classroom scene at the beginning, everyone’s just doing hard moves. [demonstrates]
Marisa Davila: That’s my favourite part.
Cheyenne: I remember seeing it too and they [told me], ‘Okay, when it goes into the fantasy sequence, everything’s gonna be in black and white except [the] colour green [of your dress] is going to stay’ and I was like, ‘Whoa! Whoa, what?’ And then all the boys, I’m in charge, everybody’s behind me!
Marisa: That’s your ideal world, right?
Cheyenne: Yes. I’m in charge. It was very empowering, too. Such an amazing moment. I love that number.
Marisa: And as somebody that didn’t get to be there on the day so the first time I see it is just when it’s edited in the episode, I was blown away.
LadyJenevia: I also thought it was super important because there’s this really negative stereotype of hyper-sexualising Latin American women so I really appreciated how all of that came together with that number.
Cheyenne: Yeah, for sure.
Marisa: We’re calling people out.
Jane is a half-Italian, half-Puerto-Rican student who is newer to Rydell High than the other Pink Ladies. She cares a great deal about her academics, as she has greater ambitions for what she will accomplish after high school. A nasty rumour about her and her (ex-)boyfriend Buddy pushes her to challenge the school’s status quo and run against him in the upcoming student election.
LadyJenevia: Marisa, one of the most fascinating threads of Jane’s story is that her Puerto Rican mother encourages her to hide her Hispanic heritage. Did you do any research into the older history of people’s experiences, either generally speaking or in Hollywood specifically, of hiding their ethnicities or cultural backgrounds for safety or to get around discrimination?
Marisa: My father is Mexicano and when he was growing up, he was going through school and I heard stories about him and his experience of, they did not call him by his Mexican name, and gave him a white name. Even the impulse to ‘hide’ was almost forced onto their generation as well, which is something that I was privy to even before getting this project. I was very caught up to speed on what that must have been like.
I love the dynamic between Jane and her mom for that reason, of Jane being a little too innocent. ‘Why is it hard? We have to be proud of where we come from!’ I feel like people are gonna be able to relate to Kitty [Jane’s mother] as well.
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies will premiere on April 6 on Paramount+.
Watch the full interviews with the cast/crew of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies here:
Grease: Rise of The Pink Ladies premieres on April 6 exclusively on Paramount+