Four strangers in New York City, all facing their own unique set of challenges, intersect unexpectedly in the series Ripple (on Netflix), created by Michele Giannusa. Starring Frankie Faison, Ian Harding, Julia Chan and Sydney Agudong, Giannusa drew inspiration from her own experience and established a found family later in life for a show that explores the power of human connection.
“This is personal to me, just in terms of having to find people later in life, when I moved to the West Coast and didn’t really have anyone out here. And so I just wanted to represent that,” Giannusa told Yahoo Canada. “Because I think it’s really easy to make friends early on in your life, in particular a teenager, early 20s, but I think it’s very different later on in life.”
“I was just happy to be able to showcase what it means to have these people in different generations really coming together and being able to relate to each other on these personal journeys they’re on.”
Frankie Faison on exploring grief in ‘Ripple’
Among the show’s characters is Walter (Faison), who is trying to navigate his life after the death of his wife, Brenda (Tina Lifford), with whom he had been married for 30 years. Throughout the series, we see him experience flashbacks to moments with his wife, as he ultimately craves human connection.
“When I first got the script and read it, I just knew that there were so many parts of Walter that are parts of Frankie, and it would be easy access,” Faison said. “He’s kind, he’s humble, he’s witty, he listens, he likes to give advice, but he won’t go over the top. I just think he’s a very amazing kind of person.”
But it was that element of grief in Walter’s life that Faison appreciated exploring in Ripple, in a way that has the potential to really touch and move viewers.
“I’ve been on this earth for a good many years, and I’ve experienced all kinds of things. I’ve experienced loss and family loss, and friends. … Even very recently, while I was doing this show, I was experiencing one of the greatest and most impactful griefs I’ve ever experienced in my life. And that was the loss of my brother, who was 10 and a half months older than me, who’s been on this earth with me every day of my life,” Faison shared. “So it helps me to be able to find comfort and relief from the grief that I felt from friends and family through acting it out in Walter. Feeling, getting in touch with Walter’s grief.”
“Each grief is individual and personal, … but Walter is manufactured. I know Walter’s grief a little better, because Walter has a beginning, a middle and the end. Whereas Frankie, he does not. My grief goes on and on.”
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The ‘Pretty Little Liars’ connection
For fans of Ian Harding, something in Ripple will certainly pique their interest, specifically the character named Aria, played by Sydney Agudong. While Giannusa confirmed Lucy Hale’s Pretty Little Liars character wasn’t the inspiration, the name is actually a reference to a different TV show.
“I love this so much. It was a coincidence. I think that it was a happy coincidence,” Giannusa said. “Actually, the four main characters, those names, were … nods to the names of characters from my favourite drama series.”
“Aria, … even though it’s not spelled the same way, is a version of Arya from Game of Thrones. … Walter is Walter White, Nate is from Six Feet Under, and Kris is actually from Parenthood.”
But there’s another behind-the-scenes connection between Ripple and Pretty Little Liars.
“Julia Chan and I have so many friends in common,” Harding shared. “Lucy did Katy Keene with Julia back in the day, and when I got this, and I found out that Julia was going to do it, I messaged Lucy, ‘Hey, your old castmate, Julia Chan.’ She was like, ‘She’s not a castmate, she is my life,’ or something like that. There was a lot of love for Ms. Chan.”
Ian Harding on playing a father who receives an unexpected cancer diagnosis
Moving away from the Pretty Little Liars connection, Harding executes one of the most impactful storylines in the whole show. He plays Nate, a dad navigating parenting amid a divorce from his wife, Claire (Vanessa Smythe), while also trying to make his wine bar more profitable. And it’s at this point in his life that he’s also diagnosed with cancer.
But throughout the film, Harding maintains this brilliant wit, which makes his portrayal of someone coming to terms with a recent cancer diagnosis, amid a load of other pressures, feel authentic.
“His sarcasm and that sort of dry wit that he has is usually in response to … the crushing weight that sometimes he has to feel. Where he’s dealing with being separated, his business not doing great, and, oh, by the way, here’s some cancer on top of it,” Harding said. “I think what was so compelling to me, and it’s just compelling whenever you watch a character like this.”
“[Nate has], let’s say a breakdown at one point, … but it’s always in kind of resistance to something else. Even when he has this emotional scene with Claire, … he was trying to convey something, which is how grateful he was for her in this moment, as opposed to, like, ‘I’m sad now.’ I think that the toxic thing with these shows is if you try and play the sad, or ‘Let’s get tears on this one.’ … If it’s written really well, which obviously Michele Giannusa did for us, then a lot of times it just comes organically.”
There’s also a particularly moving moment where Nate has to navigate how to tell his child about his cancer diagnosis, in a way that his daughter could understand.
“I guess I was kind of method in the fact that I have a child myself,” Harding said. “Becoming a dad myself was kind of one of the best things I could ever do for my acting work, because there’s a well of emotion and feeling and all of that somewhere inside you, but becoming a dad, at least for me, was the thing that tapped that oil reserve, if you will.”
“And so there wasn’t much acting that needed to happen, because I know keenly, daily, what it’s like to strive for something as a parent, and bomb. And so needing to talk to my child, … just being an actor, where I’m like, ‘Daddy’s got to go away for work.'”
Filming ‘Ripple’ in Toronto: ‘Kind, welcoming, thoughtful’
While we’ll wait to see if Ripple could continue with a Season 2, both Giannusa and the cast aren’t just hopeful that they will get to keep expanding this story, but they’re excited about the prospect of going back to Toronto to shoot the show, which uses the Canadian city to represent New York.
“I love Toronto so much,” Giannusa said in a separate interview. “Our crew, the people there, the city itself, I felt kind of embraced. And so our shoot was incredible.”
“I really … want a second season for so many reasons. I want to keep telling the story. I love the people that I work with. Being able to pay for my son’s college tuition one day, or putting away for that, that’s also nice. … But also on par with all of those is the desire to just get back to Toronto,” Harding added in a separate interview. “Sure, I could do without the traffic. But the city itself, … it feels like it has a hodgepodge of all the cities that I love, all the good parts of those.”
“There are some cities that are awesome themselves, but unfortunately, they’re filled with the residents of those cities that think they’re like, ‘We’re the best city in the world.’ And thankfully, Canadians, true to stereotype, like 99 per cent of the time, were so kind, welcoming, thoughtful. … If you told me you can only shoot in Toronto for the rest of your life, I’d be like, ‘Let’s do it!'”