“All my life, I wanted to be pretty.” Joey King’s Tally Youngblood recites those words in Uglies, Netflix’s new dystopian teen drama. In a futuristic world, 16-year-olds undergo a cosmetic operation to become “Pretties,” a new version of themselves that satisfies society’s beauty standards.
Pretties move across the river to live among one another in a community with no responsibilities or obligations. Without the surgery, people are known as “Uglies.” Tally has been dreaming of becoming a Pretty forever. But after learning about the government’s nefarious reasons for the surgery, Tally questions everything she’s ever known about her life.
Uglies is an adaptation of the 2005 novel by author Scott Westerfeld. It’s been a long and arduous process, but Westerfeld’s ideas in the book are finally on the big screen. In an interview with Digital Trends, Westerfeld discussed the dystopian boom of the 2000s, the dangers of social media’s unrealistic beauty standards, and the importance of being our authentic selves.
Note: This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Digital Trends: I want to start with how you’re feeling right now. It’s definitely been a long process, to say the least. You wrote the book in the mid-2000s. Do the math, and it’s almost 20 years since 2005. Even filming wrapped up three years ago. How did you remain patient for so long with this project?
Scott Westerfeld: Well, I mean, it is kind of funny. First, there was a pandemic, and then there was a writer’s strike and an actor’s strike. I felt like everything has been thrown at this movie. But at the same time, there was a cast, a director, and Netflix, who were all super behind it. There’s a huge fan base out there who wanted it and kept asking for it. It just goes to show you that no matter how much global bad luck you have, you can still get a movie made if people are passionate about making it.
I feel Uglies came at the beginning of the young adult teen boom. You have Harry Potter before [Uglies], and then the Hunger Games and Divergent after it. Why do young adult books and their themes remain so popular with teens?
What I’ve always liked about writing for teenagers is that the amplitude of their emotions is very high. Like, the best day when you’re a teenager is amazing and incredible. But a bad day is really, really bad. It’s like the end of the world. You can write these big dramatic sweeps [for teens] that adults don’t really have. We’re a little bit more regulated in our emotions. We’re a little bit more boring in our lives. So it lends itself to natural drama.
I think the dystopian boom that Uglies was pretty much at the front of is also about the way teenagers exist in the world. That they’re under the control of other people. I always used to say that five little kids in your store is cute, and five adults in your store is good business, but five teenagers is a time to call the cops. [laughs] There’s this sense that teenagers are not old enough to be under the rule of law and not young enough to push them around. They’re dangerous, and I think they feel that. They know that they’re on enemy territory, so dystopian stories make a lot of sense to them.
Did you have any non-negotiables when adapting the book to the screen? As an executive producer, were there one or two things where you said something has to go in no matter what?
The most important thing was for it to not look like every other dystopian movie. Because most movies about a dystopia are about being punched in the face every day. They are stormtroopers with big truncheons, riot shields, black helmets, and boots. That is not what Uglies is about. It’s not about the government oppressing you; it’s about the way that you oppress yourself.
It’s about the way you are seduced into wanting something and to give up part of yourself to get that thing. It’s a lot more like the world we live in now than some world in the future. Trying to make sure that it [the setting] didn’t look like a big prison camp was really important to me. In fact, it looks more like a big, giant playground, and that’s what I love about it.
You mentioned timing. I don’t want to say it was a blessing in disguise because I’m sure you would have liked Uglies to come out earlier, but, it [the movie] fits in with today’s themes of beauty and image. Was this the perfect time for it to come out?
Yeah. I think that if it had come out 20 years ago, it would have been about plastic surgery. Now, it’s about all this other stuff. It’s about social media and the way that we Facetune ourselves, and change and present ourselves online, and try to make ourselves look like movie stars every freaking day when we’re not. It’s this idea that we’re expressing ourselves when we make content, but we’re not really expressing our authentic selves.
Sometimes, we’re sad. Sometimes, we’re boring. Sometimes, we didn’t get the best latte in the world, but we pretend like we did. That yassification of our life creates such a demand, especially for young people. I think that that’s what Pretties is about now. Not so much plastic surgery, but digital surgery.
I even find myself trying to stay off the internet as much as I can, even though we’re doing it right now. You try and give yourself a little break, but it’s hard.
No, it’s wild. [laughs]
I want to talk about the famous line Joey says toward the end. “I’m Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty.” It’s very powerful the way she delivers it. How did you come up with that line? Did you know early on in your process that it would be one of the final lines?
That’s interesting. I mean, it is the final line of the movie, and it’s the final line of the book. That was really good. That was really important to me that it works that way. There’s a funny thing where the last line of Uglies is pretty, the last line of Pretties is special, and the last line of Specials is ugly. [laughs] I hope we get to keep that little thing because I put that in there thinking no one would notice it. And of course, people do notice it because people notice everything.
It’s [the final line] about the fact that everything that happens is linked to the next thing that happens. The end of every story is the beginning of the next story. And I think that’s how life works. It’s how trends work, and it’s how the future works. The solutions to our last problems are our next problems.
Uglies is now streaming on Netflix.