'Swimming With Sharks' Creator Kathleen Robertson Details Inspiration Behind Roku Series (Exclusive)

Swimming With Sharks, Roku's new dramatic thriller, is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about streaming shows of the year. Recently, series creator Kathleen Robertson spoke exclusively with PopCulture.com about the show and what inspired the story. Swimming With Sharks follows Lou Simms (Kiernan Shipka), "a young female assistant at the center of a studio filled with manipulators and schemers – none of whom know she's poised to outwit them all."

Diane Kruger plays the studio boss Joyce Holt, who is under pressure from her cruel mentor, Redmond (Donald Sutherland), to run things the way he expects, while also desperately trying for a baby with her husband (Gerardo Celasco). Notably, the show is a loose adaptation of the 1994 film of the same name that George Huang wrote and directed. Robertson, a longtime actress herself,  took the film's basic premise and flipped it to more accurately capture the challenges facing women in Hollywood. "For me, I've been an actor since I was 10, which is crazy. My whole life has been in this industry. My 10,000 hours have been this world," Robertson said. "And so, I felt like I had something to say in terms of my experiences. A lot of this is very personal for me and a weird way."

She continued, "As much as the show is obviously very heightened and there's a lot of crazy s— that happens, a lot of it is also really personal for me. I was 19 when I moved to L.A. ... I was very similar to Lou. I grew up with a mom that loved movies and idealized Hollywood. And I moved to L.A., not knowing anybody and was just a young, innocent girl and was like, 'I want to be in this industry.' I think that I definitely approached it from that perspective."

Robertson added, "And then I also really understood the other perspective, which is Diane Kruger's character, Joyce, which is very much a woman who is very powerful. She's very successful. She's reached the pinnacle of her career, but then she's like, 'Oh wait, I want to be a mother. I want all these things and I've maybe waited too long.' There was a lot of personal elements to this, that were very relatable to me and very much what my entry point was of it. 

The actress revealed that she "loved the original movie," adding, "I saw it in 1994 when it came out and was premiered at Sundance. And it was such an iconic film for everybody in our industry because everybody knew that it was actually true and about out the real experiences that the writer had with bosses. I wanted to also have this feel really real. And a lot of the stories that are in this as crazy as they seem, and as much as it might be like, there's no way that would happen, it's like, no, it actually has happened." Swimming With Sharks Season 1 is now streaming on The Roku Channel, which does not require a Roku-specific streaming device, as anyone can download the Roku app and stream the series for free.