Brand New Cherry Flavor Creators Tease Netflix Limited Series

Brand New Cherry Flavor is a subversive new limited series premiering on Netflix on August 13.

We got the chance to chat with creators Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion about adapting the novel by Todd Grimson to TV.

"The backstory is in like 2007 or 2008. I read the novel because I had become like email pen pals with Ty Grimson, and I've never met him in real life," Antosca shared.

"We talked by email and phone, and I didn't even know that he was a novelist. I just knew he had some short stories online. He sent me the book. I was blown away by it. I became really fascinated by this kind of complex amoral yet relatable protagonists with this really intense creative drive," he added.

"I carried the book with me and always remembered it, and then when I got into TV years later and got to know Lenore, I sent her the book in probably I think 2016 and was like, 'listen, I've always loved this book. I would love to maybe do something with it.'"

"I could not stop reading it," Lenore shared.

"The moment I opened it, I thought that it was absolutely insane. "Every time you turn a page, there's something new. That's absolutely wonderful to read and bizarre and intense in every way."

"It was kind of perfect for adaptation because it just had so much to work with."

Antosca, who created Syfy's thrilling Channel Zero, revealed his love for stories that feel like nightmares.

"It makes me feel like I'm swept away and immersed, and it doesn't happen a lot," he said of the novel.

"We tried to capture that in the show, the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen."

The series plays with many different concepts, and I wanted to see how Nick and Lenore would describe it to people who didn't know anything about it.

"It's a story about a filmmaker trying to make her movie," Nick responded.

"In a very surreal world," Lenore added.

The series is a big swing for Netflix, but one that pays off because the show is good, but playing with so many different concepts made me wonder about the pitching process.

"I mean, I can't believe this shit got Greenlight. It's amazing. That was a surprise," Nick laughed.

"Both of us have been very lucky in our careers. And you know, when I think about the shows that I have worked on, I'm always amazed that they got made," he added.

"As well as some of the stuff I've been lucky enough to work on, like Hannibal, I'm sort of like, 'I can't believe this got on the air.'"

"I can't believe somebody was like, 'oh, we should, uh, we should definitely greenlight this.' It feels sometimes it feels like you got away with something, and we just felt really lucky, as creators to get to do this," Nick said, before saying that he liked that the project was very different.

Rosa Salazar and Catherine Keener lead the cast, and it turns out they were both in mind early on.

"We talked about Rosa and Catherine right away and were very lucky to get them."

They were fond of Salazar's previous works and knew she would be the perfect pick to lead the cast.

"We needed somebody who had a real intensity, but also comic experience for Lisa Nova, and one of the things that she did so brilliantly was she was good at bringing the humanity of Lisa Nova to the forefront of the character, which was important because there was so much wild stuff going on," Lenore shared.

The duo shared that Keener brought vintage clothes the first time they met her that she thought would be perfect for the show.

The series is a limited series, so we get a beginning and ending, something the pair liked instead of an ongoing series, but they are not ruling out more from the world of Brand New Cherry Flavor.

We will have interviews with the cast next week, so return to TV Fanatic for them.

Check out the trailer below.