A 'Clueless' Series Reboot Is Coming To Peacock And It Will Be Centered On Dionne
Beloved 1995 teen film Clueless is being turned into a TV show again—but this one has a teen mystery twist to it. Deadline reports that Peacock is rebooting the series, and that it will be focused on Cher's best friend Dionne rather than Cher herself.
It's part Heathers, part Riverdale and not so much a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma like the original film was. As Deadline put it, "the new Clueless is described as a baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latte? and Adderal-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong No. 2 Dionne steps into Cher’s vacant Air Jordans. How does Dionne deal with the pressures of being the new most popular girl in school, while also unraveling the mystery of what happened to her best friend?"
The series has been in development since last October and has Will & Grace writers Jordan Reddout and Gus Hickey attached. There will be at least one person from the original film involved: producer Robert Lawrence, who is executive-producing this new Peacock series with Corinne Brinkerhoff, Tiffany Grant, and Eli Bush.
Clueless turned 25 this year. Alicia Silverstone, who played Cher in the original film, spoke to Vogue about the real-life Chers she encountered growing up. "There were some girls in my life who were extremely materialistic," she said. "I grew up with a mom who was so practical and absolutely loathed extravagance. She had a real distaste for materialism and all that came with that kind of behavior, so I would notice that quality in people I grew up with. I can think of some specific girls in my life who were really mean and materialistic. Just really bitchy girls. I wasn't trying to be like them because I didn't think Cher was like that, but there were moments where Cher could be that when she’d walk through the hallways judging everybody. Like when she takes Tai around the school pointing out the different social circles."
"Clueless was the first comedy I ever did," Silverstone said later in the interview. "I found Cher on the page to be materialistic and unappealing. And really annoying, to be honest. Just everything I sort of loathed. But I realized that was just me judging her, and once I started working on her I found all the heart and all the love. She loves her daddy so much! And she's trying to be a supportive friend, so I just sorta put all of my love and heart into this character with these other aspects that were cringeworthy."
Stacey Dash, who played Dionne, reflected on the film to ELLE in 2014, during its 20th anniversary. "The whole thing was a dream project for me," Dash said. "I mean the words on the page, [director] Amy Heckerling, Alicia Silverstone, Donald Faison, Brittany Murphy—we all had so much fun together. I have nothing bad to say about that whole experience. What you see on-screen is exactly what happened every day on set."
"To be a part of such an iconic film is a blessing. I feel blessed," Dash continued. "I really do. I have an 11-year-old daughter who is just so proud. She's finally at that age where she knows what it was. Before she didn't know what it meant that mommy was in Clueless, now she wears a Clueless T-shirt to every sleepover."
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