Why Sterling Point creator Megan Park made the next 'authentic' teen drama queer

New teen TV sensation Sterling Point is very queer, and you have creator Megan Park to thank for that.

"It just feels like queer representation just makes sense," Park says. The new Prime Video series follows Annie (Ella Rubin) to a mysterious Canadian island her grandfather left to her and her brother after his death, in search of answers. That quickly leads her to Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), the free-spirited, at times abrasive, queer sister she didn't know she had.

Beyond Ramona, Sterling Point is built around a sprawling queer chosen family. We soon meet Sully (Nikko Angelo Hinayo) and Ramona’s love interest, Oona (Bo Bragason).

"It felt authentic to these actors and the story, and it just kind of feels like a no-brainer to me," Park says of the show’s LGBTQ+ inclusion. "I’m just always trying to make things feel authentic and character driven first and foremost."

Before she was a director and showrunner, Park worked in the genre herself, starring in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. "I come from the acting side of the early 2000s TV space, which was incredibly tropey and definitely didn’t feel to me always like the most reflective of what I was actually experiencing or the people around me," she says.

Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle) on 'Sterling Point.' Courtesy of Prime

She also enlisted some stellar partners in building the next great teen drama. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who brought TV juggernauts The O.C. and Gossip Girl to audiences, served as executive producers and co-showrunners.

What makes Park’s approach stand out is how she treats LGBTQ+ inclusion as an obvious part of telling this story, not a selling point layered on top of it. “With the show, it’s an opportunity to weave in just a layer of nuance with what is hopefully just the reality of the world today,” she says.

It wasn’t Ramona’s sexuality that Park had to fight for. It was her inactivity. "There’s this sort of formulaic thing which makes a lot of sense when you’re creating a TV show, where you want people to be active in their story, in their life. It’s propulsion, it keeps you engaged, hopefully," Park explains. Instead, Ramona spends much of the season reacting to what life throws at her: the truth about her new siblings, what her grandfather kept from her, and, by the end of the season, who her real father is.

"That made sense for what she’s been through, the trauma in her life, her whole life, but specifically the last couple of years, and the situation she finds herself in, and being so young, and again, not having a mother figure in her life," she says. "There was a lot about that that felt important to protect, and not have her turn into more of a trophy of needing to be overly active."

“We would always joke that mommy issues are the core wound of everybody on the show, to some degree. Some daddy issues too, but primarily led by mommy issues,” Park says. That’s true of Ramona, Annie, and Oona alike.

For Oona, having to take care of her younger sibling, Maple (Mabel Strachan), gave Park a way to separate her story from Ramona and Annie’s. "She has such a special relationship with her sister, and such a confidence and joie de vivre, maybe because of her circumstances of not having a mother around," Park explains. Their mom is alive, but chooses to pop in for visits while spending her time abroad, so there’s a layer of Oona wanting Maple to stay a happy kid despite the abandonment.

Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin), Maple (Mabel Strachan), Oona (Bo Bragason), and Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle) on 'Sterling Point.' Sabrina Lantos/Prime

"It was just really fun to show somebody who, again, has those mommy issues that maybe hasn’t fully processed them yet, but also was having to be a mother in her own right to her sister, which is a huge responsibility," Park says.

If the show gets renewed for a second season, Park wants to dig further into the sisters’ story. "I wish we had more time to really get into Maple and Oona’s backstory and their mom and their dynamic. If we’d had more time, that would have been something I would have loved to give more landscape to," she says.

Sterling Point even has room for some lighter queer representation, in the form of Annie’s gay boyfriend. Her brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo) jokes with Annie in the pilot about her boyfriend not having come out yet, before the show quickly sends him off on summer vacation with his own love interest.

The character is really there to establish where Annie is when the series begins. "We wanted Annie to feel like a character who was a little afraid to explore her sexuality and wasn’t quite ready," Park says. "They do have a real, genuine love and respect for each other. It’s just obviously a friend situation, but there’s a safety there for her, at least, in not having to actually take the leap and actually date somebody for real."

The queer representation was always woven into the story Park set out to tell, so her hope for viewers is simple: to feel seen. "I just always hope that people feel seen to a degree, and or understood, in a way that they haven’t felt represented before in something that they’ve watched," she says of the new series.

Ask Park to explain the choice, and she barely treats it as one. "It just feels like queer representation just makes sense," she says. Nothing about that sounds like a mission statement. That’s the point.

Sterling Point premieres today on Prime Video. Watch the trailer below.