The Body Creator Unpacks The Show’s Cryptic Finale

Quinn Shephard worked on The Body for 10 years before it came to life on Netflix — but really, she’d been dreaming of making the series for much longer. “The show was born out of many years of being obsessed with every topic that it’s about when I was in high school,” the 31-year-old director says. “Anyone in my life could tell you, ‘Quinn has only ever wanted to make one thing, and it’s The Body.’ It's the most me anything has ever been.”

Growing up, Shephard couldn’t get enough of dark films like American Beauty, Carrie, Donny Darko, The Virgin Suicides, and Single White Female. “I really loved erotic thrillers and stories about girl obsession growing up,” she recalls. “In a lot of ways they were the foundational media that I saw about queerness in girls, even if it didn't know it was queer. It's like, ‘Is she trying to kill her, or does she want to have sex with her?’”

This interest in queer horror, combined with her own experience in an evangelical Christian family, inspired Shephard to create the world of The Body, a psychological drama set at a Catholic school in 2004. The show is full of religious metaphors and literary parallels, along with Y2K nostalgia — think The Crucible meets Jennifer’s Body, or if Regina George got really into devil worship.

The show deals with the unpredictability of faith and the chaos that can ensue when religion is used for manipulative ends. Below, Shepherd unpacks The Body’s controversial ending, the characters’ motivations, and her hopes for a possible Season 2.

Spoiler alert: This interview will discuss plot details from the Season 1 finale.

Elite Daily: Did you have a favorite character to create, or one you relate to most?

Quinn Shephard: There is a lot of me in a number of the characters. When the show came to me, I initially conceptualized Anya and Lisbeth. It was a year of my life when I was thinking a lot about my relationship with femininity and girlhood, and this bizarre fear of losing access to my femininity by confronting my sexuality. That was a very core struggle that I put into Anya.

My ex was my muse when I was writing Lisbeth, because she was someone who had always talked to me about struggling to understand the language of girlhood. When we met, we clicked even though we were really different. I don't know that we are exactly Anya and Lisbeth, but there were a lot of elements of our conversations about femininity and reading social cues of girlhood that I ended up putting into those characters. But I also think I'm sort of low-key Leo a little bit.

The audience should always have the opportunity to decide what they believe is happening.

ED: Leo was such an interesting character, as were all the men in this show. Did you mean to make them into foils for the very complex women we see on screen?

QS: One of my rules in the writers room was “We’re not doing men taking advantage of women in this show. I’m sick of it. We’re doing women taking advantage of men. We’re doing men who don’t understand what the f*ck is going on. That’s the theme.” We have a lot of really well-intentioned, pure-of-heart men in this show who are sometimes f*cking up, but they don’t really understand why or what’s happening. That maybe spoke to the fact that there were a lot of very opinionated gay women in the room who were like “I am so sorry to that man I dated once.”

ED: Tell me about casting. It's so refreshing to see a show full of mostly unknown actors. How did you find them?

QS: It was a really long casting process, and we were very committed to the idea that level of experience did not matter. For some people, like Sara [Boustany], the second she came on screen, we were like, “That is obviously Elise.” Then there were other people like Kristina [Bogic], who changed Anya. We approached the character really differently, because Kristina has such expressive eyes that show everything she feels. We leaned into that kindness and innocence that she has naturally. Geena [Meszaros], who plays Lisbeth, went so funny with her first tape, whereas everyone else was sending these very dramatic tapes for Lisbeth. We were like, “We’re obsessed with this girl.”

Sofia [Wylie] was also quite different from how Grace was scripted. Sofia's so strong and very confident, and we leaned in because we were like, “Sofia seems like somebody people would start a religion around.”

ED: Gabby Windey was such a fun get. How did you cast her?

Quinn: We are all big Traitors fans. We actually described the engine of the show to Netflix as similar to Traitors because we were like, “It's not a mystery in that you know who's doing what. You know who the Traitors are, but the fun is the game of watching everyone play chess with each other.” When we were thinking, “Who is Coach Miller? What's the coach's vibe?” I always used to say, “Picture Gabby Windey.” At a certain point, we were like, “Why couldn't we actually cast Gabby Windey?” Then we just did.

To me, the desire to have a religious experience is one of the most human desires there is.

ED: Talk to me about the ending. Did you always know you wanted the final scene to be Grace waking up and saying “I am God”?

QS: We did know. To me, it's the perfect next step. The show's relationship with the supernatural is meant to mimic a relationship with faith. There are unexplainable things about life, as we all know, and people attempt to explain a lot of those things with science. So everything supernatural that happens in the show has a counter theory that's grounded in physics as we understand them. But the audience should always have the opportunity to decide what they believe is happening, even if that’s different from what someone else thinks.

“I am God” from Grace is such a fun way to end because it does open questions: Could she hear them when she was in the coma? Did she have a near-death experience? Is she actually God? Did something happen to her when they tried to sacrifice her? Did she become holy? It leaves that open in a way that summarizes what we want to continue to do with the show.

There are some people who go “Well, what is it?” That's like asking me what happens after we die. That's the whole point. We're curious.

ED: Are there intentional Easter eggs throughout the show that hint at where it's going?

QS: Oh, yeah. I would love some religious scholarly people to do a deep dive on all the quotes and symbolism in the season, because there are tons of references to Biblical stories, historical saints, lore theories, and alternative Catholic theories, as well as Easter eggs about the plot. There is quite a lot of stuff sprinkled throughout.

Overall, the show is hopefully very faith-positive but system-critical. To me, the desire to have a religious experience is one of the most human desires that there is, but the systems of power and manipulation that can be created that exploit that basic human desire can be very complicated.

ED: If The Body gets renewed for Season 2, is there anywhere in particular you want to go with the story?

QS: I think the show will continue to explore those same themes of how our characters and our audience choose to view life. We're very excited for Grace to be up and at ’em and having some things to say. She’s like, “Y'all, what has been happening? Some of you have been acting out of pocket.” That's really all I can say. Lots more antics coming.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.