Outrageous “Florida man” headlines have become cultural in-jokes — but get ready for “Florida Girls.”
The new half-hour comedy, premiering Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Pop, follows a group of twenty-something women who are forced to confront their stagnant lives in West Florida when one of their own moves away from the Sunshine State.
“When I first moved to LA, I’d just casually tell people stories about growing up in Florida, and people were so startled and shocked about some of the adventures I’d get into growing up,” says “Florida Girls” creator/star Laura Chinn. She’s been a writer on Fox’s “The Mick” and “Grandfathered” and guest-starred in shows such as “Happy Endings,” but “Florida Girls” marks her first time both behind and in front of the camera.
“Writers and actor friends were always talking about like, ‘Someday you have to write your Florida show,’ ” she says. “So while I was writing on other people’s shows — learning and figuring out what it means to be a TV writer — I always, in the back of my mind, had this desire to tell a Florida story.”
Co-starring Melanie Field (“Shrill”) and Laci Mosley (“Single Parents”), the sitcom includes antics in dive bars, money-making schemes and run-ins with local cops. Chinn says it’s based on scenarios she experienced in her life between the ages of 9 and 20 when she lived in Clearwater, where the show is set (though it’s filmed in Georgia).
‘Growing up, my group of girlfriends were all flawed and f–ked up in different ways.’
“It was a lot of kids getting into trouble, people getting pregnant at young ages, drugs and shenanigans with the cops,” she says. “Kids unsupervised and running around … was sort of my experience. So when I moved to California and talked to people who were supervised and had curfews and family structure, they were always very surprised to hear those stories.”
While the show might draw comparisons to the similarly named Northern Irish show “Derry Girls” (Channel 4/Netflix), Chinn says she hadn’t heard of that series until after making “Florida Girls” — and that she was more inspired by Comedy Central’s “Broad City.”
“I love how much those girls are flawed but really love each other,” she says. “Growing up, my group of girlfriends were all flawed and f–ked up in different ways, but we had each other’s backs and were all very supportive of each other, like a family.
“I really wanted this show to come across that way,” she says. “As much as these girls pick on each other and aren’t always able to support every idea the other one has, at the end of the day they don’t backstab or do something horrific. I think that’s an important way to depict women. It’s not just catty — there’s a deep love there. So it’s definitely inspired by ‘Broad City’ in that way.”
And while it’s easy to make jokes about Florida, Chinn says the show is made with love for her home state.
“Obviously there’s no denying that very outrageous headlines come out of Florida every day,” she says. “But I stand up for Florida by saying, even though we like to make fun of it, I think it’s a microcosm of America.
“There are so many different kinds of people all stuffed into this one state.”