- [Producer] Growing up, what would you watch
and what did it make you think high school would be like?
- I grew up on 'High School Musical.'
- I thought my life was gonna be 'High School Musical.'
- Yeah.
- I was like, "Lunch is gonna be great.
"Flash mobs are real."
- [Brett] Like, jumping around on tables.
- Right.
- And like, not learning academics.
(laughing)
- Did you think that everyone would sing in the cafeteria?
- Nah, didn't happen.
- It didn't happen.
- All lies.
- Such a disappointment.
- My school was kinda like 'High School Musical.'
The principal, he brought out,
I don't know where it came from,
brought out a guitar and starts playing it.
(laughing)
I don't know what's going on here.
- They always make prom look so frickin' cool on TV.
- [Maitreyi] Give me a 'Mean Girls' prom.
Break the crown.
- I wanted a 'Carrie' prom.
- I watched all of like, the 'UK Skins,'
I really thought that was gonna be my life.
- Damn, yo.
I saw 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' and thought--
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- How the hell, like, all these high school movies,
they're always at a restaurant every day--
- Yeah they have like, their own table.
- High school, for me, was very awkward.
- It had its ups and downs, for sure.
- I got Class Comedian, of course,
and I was walking around singin' in the hallways.
- Oh, nothing has changed.
(laughing)
- I was very different in high school
than I am on this show.
Thank God.
- I was young and just an (beep)hole.
- Think I was a nightmare when I was a teen.
- Well, I kinda didn't go to any of my classes senior year
because I went to the bathroom every period
and just walked around, you know.
But, I still feel educated.
- I was not that cool in high school.
I wish.
- I was home-schooled.
- I was home-schooled for who knows how long
and then I was just like, "I wanna do high school,"
'cause like, you know, society.
So, I did, and I hated it.
And then, I like, left,
and then, I still have friends at that high school
who say the freshmen talk about me
like, I like am some ghost that haunts--
It's fun that they're like, "Oh my god, Lachlan Watson."
- "She still haunts these halls."
- Yeah.
- I was actually really bullied my first two years
of high school.
There was this one kid,
he gave me a Gatorade one time
and I thought it was a kind gesture,
and he put two laxatives in it.
- Oh no!
- Yeah, no, I swear.
- I was just always very quiet,
very into the arts, like keeping to myself.
- Like, all the activities that were in school,
we did it all.
Student committee and like--
- Oh!
- Okay.
- I did theater.
- I was in a lot of plays.
- I was in Robotics Club, I played tennis,
played Magic: The Gathering.
- Danced,
wasn't very good at it, but it was a choice.
- I did cheer and I did acting.
I really did.
You didn't know that?
- Art Club, Future Farmers,
I was just in so many different weird--
- Oh, Sierra's a future farmer.
- In Georgia, they had a Future Farmers Club of America, yes.
- Girl, what you growing in that garden?
- Look...
- No, I just kind of jumped around
from all the different social groups.
Like, I never really fit in with one.
- [Richard] Because I had all my sports friends
and my musician friends and I was kind of pulled in between,
and I think it's very easy when you're younger
to feel insecure about those things
and try to make a decision of where you fit.
- I feel like I didn't know who I was,
so I constantly was just trying to be whoever was around me.
Like, I was like, "Oh, I can be preppy this week,"
and then next week, I'll discover Slipknot
and go through an angsty phase.
Like, I feel like I went through a lot
of discovery in high school.
- With this show, that I think is really nice,
is that it kinda shows you could fit wherever,
that you don't have to be a square peg in a square hole.
You could be whatever.
- I think the most challenging thing is like,
you feel so incredibly lonely.
You don't have the language to express how you really feel
'cause you're just navigating all
of these feelings for the first time.
Even if you have a really great group of girlfriends
or you know, guy friends or whatever, it's just,
you don't know how to express yourself that well.
- And you also don't know who you really are.
- Exactly, exactly.
- And, it's so debilitating
that you think you know exactly who you are.
- I've never had a stronger sense of self than I did
when I was 15 or 16.
- You think you know best.
- That's what makes you an (beep)hole.
- Yeah, exactly.
- This is who I am.
- [Thaddea] Everyone's trying to act so much more confident
than they actually are.
You're all just trying to figure it out
but you look at everyone else
and they seem to have it figured out,
and you're like, "Oh God, I need to know who I am,"
when you're like 15, 16,
and you got a whole life ahead of you,
you have so much time for that.
- I definitely feel like you couldn't be anything new,
and that comes from the idea that people are scared of new,
and if you are new and you are different,
that scares people and they're like,
"Okay, you're weird."
And now, you're suddenly an outcast
which is a teenager's worst nightmare.
- When you're queer in high school,
it's like, our very existence is something
that hasn't really been shown well in like, YA.
- At least certainly not when I was a kid.
- I feel like there's a lot more representation
in this show of a lot of different subcultures and groups.
- [Brett] Our show specifically covers the demographic, I think,
of people of color.
- Everyone in it is so diverse, all the novices,
they're not all like each other.
- Like, the lead is, you know, of color.
- The ladies, the ladies. - South Asian.
The ladies.
Us, lovely human beings here.
- And I don't think I saw that represented a lot
in the way that it is done in our show,
where as it's done through comedy.
- I think also, with so many shows,
people that look like us played everybody's friend
and was never, like, we were always a side story
and never the A story.
So, the fact that there's an entire generation of kids
that get to see themselves
as leaders of their own stories,
that means everything to us.
- I'm like, one of the first non-binary people on a popular show.
It is exactly what it is, where it's like, I didn't have me,
I didn't have someone to look at
and be like, "I relate to you,"
Like, I relate to Gimli more than I related to anybody else.
And so it's like,
I truly didn't have that.
So, to be that now is just a full circle thank you moment.
- 'Cause it does matter. I mean, it really does. - It does.
- When you see yourself represented as a hero
in every single film, you just think that you are the hero,
and then if you don't see that ever, you kind of just internalize those--
- Or you're seen as the villain. Right.
- Those things.
And I just feel like, representation really does matter.
Just to see yourself as somebody else
and your own possibility is a really cool thing,
- For Fabiola, the mental aspect
of questioning your sexual orientation, it's difficult.
Especially if it's for the first time ever.
You start to think about it.
It's something that a lot of teenagers go through.
The mental aspect of that can be a lot.
- I think we talk about mental health.
That's something that I never was,
I don't think mental health was talked about
when I was in high school.
- Not so as openly.
- No, no.
- Not even in entertainment especially,
but also definitely not in school.
- With Devi, clearly she's dealing with the loss
of her dad who truly was her number one supporter,
and we see how she, herself,
pretends like it's not a big deal.
She repeatedly says that to her therapist,
but that's the case for a lot of kids
'cause they don't get to unpack it,
and especially for kids who don't have that space
where it's acceptable to even try and unpack it.
So, Devi's here pushing it away.
I feel like that's something that a lot of kids do
when you're unsure
and you're deep down really sad and scared.
- This show, "I Am Not Okay with This,"
really travels themes of accepting yourself
and actually being okay with who you are.
That's something maybe not everyone
was able to do in the past.