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Where shes young and rebellious?
Starring Oscar nominee and pop star Hailee Steinfeld?
Has TVs great horny-industrial complex claimed another victim?
Instead, its a bleak-as-hell 30-minute comedy about a moody poet who keeps rebelling against her parents.
And its a queer love story about Dickinsons relationship with her sister-in-law.
And also, a gothic horror story about how she never actually did escape her own home.
But creator Alena Smith doesnt mind if you refer to the show as Sexy Dickinson.
Why do we think of her as this sexless shut-in?
I wouldnt want to watch a show not about sexy Dickinson.
If Emily Dickinson were alive today, Steinfeld joked, Her Twitter would be popping.
Everyones free to invent their own Emily Dickinson, and this is mine, Smith said.
I dont in any way say its the authoritative version.
I had this bizarre idea to make an experimental half-hour show about Emily Dickinson, she said.
Most of her work went unpublished until after her death in 1866.
On the outside, her life has maybe the structure of the BritishOffice, she said.
But inside, its a lot more than that.
Many ideals that the country had only been recently built upon were proven to be deceptive or untenable.
Maybe we still have Whigs in this country and we dont know it, Smith joked.
But ultimately, it was one pitch.
She pitched the show on a Friday, and Apple bought it on Monday.
And Emily Dickinson is an American poet.
And theres also something about Hailee that is just so contemporary.
At least thats what Emily was so desperate for Sue to be.
Theres also a set of guest appearances, including John Mulaney as Henry David Thoreau (We cancel him!
Smith said with delight) and Zosia Mamet as Louisa May Alcott.
This doesnt mean that the town of Amherst on the show is entirely white, however.
If you were in a lecture room in Amherst, you wouldnt see all white faces.
But I was looking really hard for ways to find the characters who werent and then show them.
That was so long ago.
I dont even know how fresh that is.
Emily Dickinson appropriated in her poetry.
She appropriated the rhythms of her Irish maid.
She appropriated the language of the Native Americans who came by the house to sell baskets, she said.
America has always been a melting pot.
Even if youre an uptight New Englander, youre going to be affected by the language thats around you.
They really did have us plucking real chickens and taking real innards out of things, Jane Krakowski said.
Were looking for details that uncannily resonate with where we are today, she said.
You could imagine someone in the 1850s having abitch, pleasemoment.
That was probably an emotion that was available to them.
