AMC's 'Dietland' presents a different kind of transformation story
Marti Noxon remembers it clearly. The writer and producer behind "UnReal" and "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" was pitching her latest feminist manifesto to networks during the 2016 election. And it felt all too appropriate.
On parade was "Dietland," her adaptation of Sarai Walker's 2015 satirical novel, which is partly a self-acceptance story and partly revenge fantasy. It focuses on Plum Kettle, a ghostwriter for a high-powered (and fashionably slim) editor at a posh women's magazine. Plum, at 300 pounds, struggles with her body image and is saving up for weight-loss surgery when she unexpectedly gets caught up in an underground feminist movement.
"I remember pitching on a day when (Donald Trump) was mocking a contestant from one of his beauty pageants for being fat," Noxon says. "And I thought, 'Well, this show will probably still be relevant when Hillary Clinton is president.'"
Some two years later - and Noxon's election assumptions
