A girl sits in a rustic latrine, wearing shades, accepting grubby handfuls of dollar bills in exchange for baggies of forbidden stash. She could be pushing crystal meth. But this young woman’s drugs include Jelly Bellies, Twinkies and aerosol cans of whipped cream.
“Huge,” a new drama series from ABC Family, follows the heartbreaking struggles of seven overweight teens at an upscale weight-loss camp, optimistically named Camp Victory.
Nikki Blonsky (“Hairspray”) stars as Williamina, a young woman who does not eat steamed rice and vegetables. When asked to pose in her swimsuit for her “before” picture, Willamina strips in front the other newbies. “You know,” she tells a fellow camper, “this could be my summer to gain weight. I feel like inside me, there’s an even fatter person just waiting to get out.”
“Huge” is not a Cinderella story. Inspired by Sasha Paley’s 2008 novel, none of the characters has an epiphany about their size or gets an extreme makeover by the end of the first episode. Instead, they deal with being in a closed-off world of troubled teens all struggling with self-image.
“A lot of teen shows focus on every character being really popular, smooth and great-looking,” says producer Savannah Dooley, 24, who has struggled with her own body image and wrote the unflinching pilot with her mother, veteran television and stage writer Winnie Holzman (“My So Called Life”). “I’m very much against that.”
Dooley used her own experience to better represent the misfits. “My big struggle has been accepting myself, appearance-wise. I’ve always been identified as a chubby person,” she says. “I never went to a weight-loss camp. But I’m trying now to get back to that mindset where you’re 15 and you’re horrified by your own body.”
The show’s scene-stealer is newcomer Hayley Hasselhoff, 17, daughter of David Hasselhoff. She plays Amber, the thinnest and most beautiful girl in the zaftig set.
“The majority of people who go to fat camps are forced to go by their parents,” says Hasselhoff, a successful plus-size model for the last four years. “I’m so happy to be part of something that says it’s okay to be voluptuous.”
Although Hasselhoff grew up watching her father filming “Baywatch” with Pamela Anderson, she says she didn’t aspire to look like the bathing beauties in that cast.
“I never looked at those girls’ bodies and said, ‘Oh my God, I have to be a size 2,’” says Hasselhoff. “I knew that the right role would come to me at the right time. I don’t need to change for Hollywood. Hollywood should change for me.”
In the meantime, producers still have to worry about attracting an audience.
“When I Googled the show’s message boards, I was appalled by the comments,” says Dooley. “Like, ‘This show promotes obesity.’ That’s just ludicrous.”
Dooley won’t compromise her show’s realistic take, even the black market deals for Milk Duds and M&Ms. “I used to binge on Easter-sized packages of M&Ms,” she says. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”